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THE 



PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE 

FOUNDED ON LITERARY 

FORMS 



BY 



HENRY J. RUGGLES 

AUTHOR OF "THE METHOD OF SHAKESPEARE AS AN ARTIST' 




'oft 



*a1 of 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

Cjjc Ktoermtoe Prcae;, CambrOiffc 

[895 



Copyright, 1895, 
By HENRY J. RUGGLES. 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company. 



PREFACE. 



That the Plays of Shakespeare — or rather the Tragedies and 
Comedies, for the Histories are not now taken into account — 
are founded on Literary Forms is a proposition that will, at first 
glance, appear to many too improbable to be entitled to consider- 
ation, and hence it is deemed advisable at the outset to place 
here in the Preface a brief explanation of the purport and aim of 
this volume. 

It is a commonplace that Shakespeare's plays are many-sided. 
Th* y have, in the first place, an Artistic side, in which respect it 
is believed that they offer good examples of that theory of Art 
of Bacon's laid down in his Aphorism on "Instances of 4 \e Wit 
and Hand of Man " (Nov. Org. Book II. Aph. 31), which de- 
clares that a work of true art must be founded on " a form" 
The word " form " Bacon uses technically, and it is perhaps un- 
fortunate that he did so, as the wide difference between its scho- 
lastic or metaphysical sense and its common acceptation is apt to 
produce confusion. " A form " must not in the least be con- 
founded with figure or shape ; it may perhaps be defined, at 
least for present purposes, as that inward constitutive principle 
which gives to a thing its specific properties, and is about equiva- 
lent to the idea or law of a thing, of which the outward form 
and sensible properties are the product. When stated in lan- 
guage, it is an axioni or definition ; as, for instance, " the form " 
of History (as & species of writing) is a judgment of men by 
trial and experience, or " the form " of a fable is to convey a 
knowledge of the world by symbols. For critical purposes, the 
terms "form" idea, and law may be considered as interchange- 
able; but as the theory that a "form" is essential to a work of 



iv PREFACE. 

art is more particularly explained in the remarks upon The Win- 
ter's Tale- (a, play which treats of Art), it need not here be en- 
larged Upon. 

The plays have also a moral side, being pictures of human life, 
which present the old and everlasting contest between the desires 
and the reason, varied only from play to play by the difference in 
the objects pursued, — a difference, however, sufficient to give 
each play its own ideal and its own standard of judgment. And 
in this respect the moral and artistic sides blend, for the poet 
goes for his " forms " to literature, or, say, learning generally, of 
which each special style is determined by its purpose or end ; as, 
for instance, to refer again to the case of History, the purpose 
or end of History is to judge of the comparative worth and rank 
of men as proved by actual trial. This is apparently the essential 
idea of History and what Bacon would call its " form ; " or in the 
case of a fable, the end is to convey a knowledge of moral truth 
by symbols, and this is its " form ; " and when such an idea or 
"form" is adopted as a constructive principle of a play and is 
developed back, as it were, into dramatic life and action, repre- 
senting that side of human affairs, or that pursuit of ends, which 
furnishes the matter for the special style of writing from which 
" the form " is taken, it becomes obviously the rule that must be 
followed for the successful attainment of such ends, and, there- 
fore, has a moral as w T ell as an artistic side, as — again to recur 
to History — a play founded on the " form " of History will ex- 
hibit a world in which men have for their ends the passing of 
judgments upon persons and things with a view of assigning them 
their rank, at least, in their own esteem and love, if not in gen- 
eral estimation ; while the rule that insures the correctness of such 
judgments requires the use of actual test as proof. 

But as, in the pursuit of their desires, men muke use of those 
means which they have been taught by experience are the best 
for the purpose, they in time formulate these means into meth- 
ods and rules, and thus create Arts and Sciences, as, to take 
familiar instances, from a desire of health and the use of means 






PREFACE. v 

to preserve it, there arises the Art of Medicine, or, from a wish 
to persuade, the Art of Rhetoric ; or, to recur once more to His- 
tory, of which the end is to make a correct judgment of men by 
actual proof, but in doing which the mind is often misled by sec- 
ondary evidence unless means are taken to guard it against error, 
such means, when approved by experience, are framed into rules 
and methods that constitute the Art of Judging, or what is called 
the Inductive Method ; and in like manner with other sciences. 

Consequently the plays have a scientific or doctrinal side, being 
so constructed that their personages in the pursuit of their ends 
exemplify, positively or negatively, by their action and speech, 
the tenets and rules of that art, science, or doctrine which grows 
out of the means used to accomplish their purposes or gratify 
their desires; from which it is apparent that not only do the 
moral and artistic sides coalesce, but that these two are also incor- 
porated with the philosophic side into one. 

And it is observable that in these illustrations of different 
branches of learning, the poet for the most part follows the divis- 
ions of the sciences laid down by Bacon, but not always ; for he 
sometimes takes his rules from Aristotle, but this apparently is 
only in cases where Bacon is silent on the points involved. 

These plays have, moreover, what may be called a rhetorical 
side, that is, they may be examined as compositions with respect 
to their diction and metaphor, and particularly their use of words 
that are affined with or suggestive of the leading conceptions of 
the play, together with the phrases scattered through the piece 
containing thoughts, similes, and figures of speech that present 
analogies to the rule that is implicit in " the form; ' or rather is 
14 the form " or organic idea ; and to this side also belongs the 
consideration of language itself in those peculiar phases and 
properties, and particularly those imperfections of it which cause 
it greatly to mislead the judgment, or which give it a special re- 
lation to that view of life and branch of literature of which " the 
form " is the essential law. 

In addition to the above modes of considering these plays, they 



vi PREFACE. 

have also a dramatic and a poetical side, in viewing the former 
of which notice may be taken of the curious and ingenious arti- 
fices employed to accelerate or retard the time or movement of 
the action, or to strengthen the effectiveness of the scene or unify 
the details of the piece ; and also of the incessant vigilance and 
mental activity in the nice adaptation of scene and stage or out- 
ward world to the moral tone and level of the sentiments and con- 
duct of the characters, and other similar matters ; while, viewed 
on their poetical side, that is, as complete works of art, we see 
the bare moral skeletons with which analysis only concerns itself, 
now reinvested with flesh and blood, and the whole piece become 
a world of living, breathing reality, with innumerable lights and 
shades, and filled with the joy and terror of life, enlisting the 
sympathies, delighting the imagination, and satisfying that sense 
of beauty to which it is the aim of art to minister. But these 
two last sides of the plays have been set forth by a thousand pens, 
with a force, insight, and eloquence that leave nothing to be de- 
sired, and to which nothing to any purpose could well be added ; 
therefore but little note is taken of these particulars in the follow- 
ing pages. On the other heads, however, there has not so much 
been said ; indeed, it is believed that a wide field of Shake- 
spearian study remains yet unexplored, and of a few gleanings in 
this field this volume is offered as a contribution. 

It is perhaps impossible to venture into the domain of Shake- 
spearian criticism without treading on ground that has been trav- 
ersed by others ; and if in the following pages there shall be 
found matter that belongs to other writers (outside of that gen- 
eral stock of information that is common to all) for which 
credit is not given (of which, however, the present writer is not 
conscious of any instance), it is hoped that such omission will be 
attributed to inadvertency, and not to any disposition to appro- 
priate the labors of others without acknowledgment ; and, fur- 
thermore, it may perhaps not be superfluous to add that the bulk 
of this volume has been written many years. 

When the word " form " is used in this volume in its technical 
or Baconian sense, it will be marked with inverted commas. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Introduction 1 

Cymbeline . 6 

The Winter's Tale . 85 

King Lear 162 

The Merchant of Venice 240 

All 's Well that Ends Well 276 

Troilus and C res sid a 333 

As You Like It 400 

Much Ado about Nothing 452 

The Merry Wives of Windsor 496 

Romeo and Juliet . . . 520 

Othello, the Moor of Venice 579 

The Tempest 655 



[E PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE FOUNDED ON 
LITERARY FORMS. 



INTRODUCTION. 



If a moralist or a metaphysician — or say, a philosopher com- 
bining both in one — wished to illustrate his rules of conduct or 
his laws of mind or, in other words, his moral or mental science by 
examples drawn from real life, he would be obliged to ransack 
histories, lives, memoirs and other records of human action for 
cases in point ; but if he could command the pen of a great dra- 
matic poet or were he such a poet himself, endowed with a creative 
imagination and a profound knowledge of the world, he might in- 
vent plays so near to truth and nature that, while complying with 
the demands of dramatic art, they would present such pictures of 
life and of the good and evil in men's natures as would exemplify a 
philosophy of man." In such plays, the characters would have 
that mental constitution, the events that moral significance, and 
the dialogue those thoughts and sentiments, which, like the char- 
acters and events of real life, would furnish materials for a system- 
atic knowledge of human nature ; with this difference, however, 
that whereas truth in real life is gathered from widely scattered 
particulars, in these plays it would in each be presented in char- 
acters and incidents woven into one connected story, furnishing 
all the examples necessary for the elucidation of some special 
branch of moral science. A drama written on this plan would be 
a vast collection of mental and moral phenomena making up in 
the aggregate a Natural History of the human mind, of which 
each play would constitute a separate chapter, devoted to some 
particular phase of life, with its special class of moral facts. Such 
a Natural History, it is believed, are the plays of Shakespeare ; 
the proof of which, however, must be in showing that those plays 
can be used, not merely in scraps and parts, but in their whole 
scope and tenor, to exemplify a well digested system of philoso- 
1 



2 INTRODUCTION. 

phy. The abstract propositions of the philosopher must be re- 
vivified and made, as -it were, to flower out into concrete and 
dramatic life and action. The thesis of the following pages is 
that the Shakespearian drama does this for the philosophy of 
Bacon. 

This philosophy was not a theory of the world, but a method of 
judgment ; it professed to teach men how to arrive at a valid con- 
clusion. No doubt it aimed, in its ultimate results, at a complete 
comprehension of the universe, but in its initial step it was an 
" organum " or " machine" to guide the judgment in the investiga- 
tion of truth. This is a cardinal fact and should be kept in mind, 
as it is in the correct or incorrect formation of judgments that 
the doctrines of Bacon seem most effectually to be carried into 
the characters and action of the plays. 

One of Bacon's chief aims was to emancipate the mind from its 
euthrallment to the Aristotelian logic, which, though of use in its 
appropriate sphere, was, he contended, wholly inadequate to cope 
with the subtilty of nature. He therefore brought forward a new 
method of Induction, which admits no conclusion, except upon 
proof of sense and experience, and this, too, in all the gradations 
of inference' from simple particulars to the highest generalities. 
This is obviously in direct contrast with the method commonly 
practiced by the mind, which, after gathering a few and in most 
cases quite inadequate number of facts, hastens to generalize upon 
them ; and accepting the propositions thus obtained as incon- 
trovertible truths, adopts them as premises, by which to prove 
the intermediate propositions. This latter or deductive method, 
which was the one almost universally in fashion previous to 
Bacon's age, is exposed to many errors ; the facts or proofs it 
relies upon are few in number and insufficiently tested, the con- 
clusions derived from them are hasty and unsound, and the syl- 
logisms founded on such conclusions are untrustworthy, since 
" syllogisms consist of propositions and propositions of words ; 
and words being but the current tokens and imperfect signs of 
things and full of deceit and ambiguity, necessarily vitiate the con- 
clusion." It was to combat and do away with this unsatisfactory 
mode of arriving at truth that Bacon invented his " organum " by 
which he sought to " make the mind a match for the nature of 
things." 

The leading distinction then between the system of Bacon and 



INTRODUCTION. 3 

that of the old philosophies — to which latter the mind is of its 
own nature prone — lay in the different methods of proof and 
judgment. Consequently if these plays or any of them can be 
taken as illustrative examples of the Baconian philosophy, they 
must, of necessity, exhibit and contrast in their principal features 
the correct and incorrect exercise of the judgment in forming con- 
clusions, and furnish incidents, characters, and situations which 
will serve as examples both' of the Inductive and Deductive 
methods of demonstration. Of these methods, Cymbeline and 
The Winter s Tale are, respectively, leading instances. It may be 
remarked that the mode in which philosophy, as such, is exempli- 
fied in the plays is very simple. The formation of a correct judg- 
ment is the only means of arriving at truth and consequently lies 
at the bottom of all science. A Shakespearian play is a repre- 
sentation of practical life, and must, in its action, exhibit charac- 
ters that necessarily exercise their judgments in the choice of ends 
and also of the means of attaining such ends, and these means, 
when rightly selected, which they can only be through a know- 
ledge of causes, are resolvable into the application of causes to 
produce effects and furnish rules for some special art or doctrine ; 
so that it is easy for the dramatist, provided he be possessed of 
the requisite knowledge and fertility of thought — and Shake- 
speare has always been supposed to be abundantly gifted with 
these — to convert his play, without in the least affecting its dra- 
matic qualities, into an illustrative example of some special branch 
of knowledge. 

In his attempts at the reformation of philosophy, Bacon taught 
that the old systems were, so far as a knowledge of nature was 
concerned, but useless theories made up of words and wholly 
unproductive of works ; for which he proposed to substitute facts 
and things ; and in treating of the prejudices and delusions that 
infest the human mind and obscure the judgment, he assigned 
the first rank in importance to those which grow out of the im- 
perfections and perversions of words and names. This notion 
that language is the main source of error is constantly put for- 
ward by Bacon, " f or the great sophism of all sophisms," he says, 
"is equivocation or ambiguity of words and phrases; and the 
same notion in some form is exemplified in almost every play o\ 
Shakespeare; in fact, it is most intimately connected with that 
contrast between the factitious and the real which is one of the 
most notable features of the Shakespearian drama. 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

But neither these nor any other general resemblance in the 
plays to Bacon's tenets can be taken as a ground on which to 
build an argument that there is a connection between the plays 
and the philosophy. It will be said that it needed not Bacon 
nor any other seer or prophet to couch the eye of the writer of 
Hamlet or Othello in order that he might see the difference 
between words and things, and no parallelism between the general 
views and doctrines expressed by the poet and philosopher will 
be accepted as proof — in the first instance at least — of any 
communication or other privity between them ; but it so happens 
that in the later plays, and particularly in those written towards 
the close of the dramatist's career, the apparent similitudes point 
not simply to the theoretical views, but to the system and tech- 
nicalities of the Baconian philosophy ; they seem to reach the 
classification and subdivisions of the subjects of which they treat. 
Two great original minds, investigating the same subject, might, 
and in all probability would, arrive at the same general conclu- 
sions ; and as truth is one, the profounder their intellects, the 
more likely they would be to concur ; but no two original minds 
classify alike, for originality may be said to consist in the power 
of making a new classification, that is, of subjecting phenomena 
to a new principle of arrangement, the selection of which de- 
pends upon affinities and processes of thought that are peculiar 
to each mind and constitute its originality. To say, therefore, 
that two original minds classify alike is a contradiction of terms. 
Yet between the writings of Bacon and these plays, there are 
seemingly coincidences that indicate an identity not only of phi- 
losophic views but also of the distribution and even the nomen- 
clature of the subject. If then these similitudes be not entirely 
fanciful ; if they shall be found to be too numerous and system- 
atic to be considered casual, it will follow that there is some 
connection between the plays and the Baconian philosophy, and 
consequently that between Bacon and Shakespeare there existed 
some personal relation, the nature of which, however, must be 
left to conjecture since neither history nor tradition makes any 
mention of it. 

One point should be borne in mind. Shakespeare's plays, 
though thoroughly diversified and each possessing its own style 
and manner, even its own idioms and peculiarities of phraseology 
and versification, yet all have the same subject ; they all treat of 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

Man ; and will, therefore, in their philosophy sometimes overlap 
each other : for man can be considered only as an individual, or 
as a member of society or the State ; and inasmuch as the philo- 
sophical truths growing out of his nature as an individual or as a 
social or political being are few in number compared with the 
infinite variety of actions and events, the same passages from 
Bacon will occasionally be cited with reference to incidents in 
different plays ; yet notwithstanding these repetitions and this 
superficial sameness, it will be found, it is believed, that the appli- 
cation of the principles is in each case different and the subject 
looked at from a different point of view. 

These repetitions take place more particularly with reference to 
the doctrine of " Idols," which being but another name for the 
prejudices and fallacies that beset the human mind, must neces- 
sarily take a prominent place among illustrations of errors of 
judgment. 

The plays each present an artistic, a moral and a philosophic 
side, which, though they can be considered separately, support 
each other and blend in one total effect. 

The shortest road to the philosophy of the plays is through 
their art, inasmuch as this philosophy finds exponents in the 
sentiments, purposes, and mental habits of the characters, which, 
of course, depend upon the constructive law of the piece ; and for 
this reason, The Winter's Tale should perhaps be taken up 
before Cymbeline, for The Winter's Tale treats of art and may 
be regarded as a model which fully illustrates Bacon's doctrine 
of the development of works of art from "forms," yet as Cymbe- 
line seems to put into life and action the inductive method itself, it 
logically leads the way and is therefore first considered. 

The quotations from Bacon's works are chiefly from the edition 
of Spedding, Ellis and Heath (reprinted in Boston, 1860), some- 
times from that of Montagu. 



CYMBELINE. 

INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

The purpose of the following analysis of the play of Cymbeline is to 
show, that, although a romantic drama, presenting a highly poetical, not to 
say a fantastic, phase of life, it nevertheless illustrates, in dramatic life 
and action, the method of the Experimental Philosophy, together with 
some other doctrines of Bacon ; but in order that it may be more pre- 
cisely understood what particular doctrines are here referred to, they 
will be briefly stated. 

In the De Augmentis in which Bacon classifies and distributes the 
extant arts and sciences and also notes those that are deficient, he thus 
makes the primary division of learning : — 

" The best division of human learning is that derived from the three 
faculties of the rational soul which is the seat of learning ; history being 
relative to the memory, poetry to the imagination, and philosophy to the 
reason." Book II. ch. 1. 

The logical arts he thus divides : " The logical arts are four in number, 
divided according to the ends at which they aim, for men's labor in ra- 
tional knowledge is either to invent that which is sought, or to judge 
that which is invented, or to retain that which is judged, or to deliver 
over that which is retained : so, therefore, the rational arts are four : Art 
of enquiry or invention ; Art of Examination or judgment ; Art of Custody 
or memory, and Art of Elocution or tradition." Book V. ch. 1. 

" Invention is of two kinds very different ; the one of arts and sciences, 
the other of speech and argument. The former of these I report alto- 
gether deficient" Book V. ch. 2. 

This deficiency Bacon aims at supplying by the Novum Organum, or 
new instrument for the mind. It is the true Inductive method resting on 
experience and is called The Interpretation of Nature. 

The Art of Judging, the second of the rational arts above named, 
"handles the nature of proofs and demonstrations. In this art, as in- 
deed it is commonly received, the conclusion is made either by induction 
or syllogism" Book V. ch. 4. 

The syllogism, as a means of investigating nature, is utterly condemned 
by Bacon, and induction, as defined by the logicians, fares no better at 
his hands. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 7 

" For the vicious forms of induction," he says, " I entirely disclaim 
it, and as for the legitimate form I refer it to the New Organum or 
our method of interpreting nature." 

The Art of Memory Bacon divides into " two parts, viz, the doctrine 
of helps for the memory and the doctrine of the memory itself. The 
help for the memory is writing . . . and tables duly arranged." Book 
V. ch. 5. 

The Art of Transmission, or " the art of producing and expressing to 
others those things which have been invented, judged, and laid up in the 
memory, includes all the arts relating to words and discourse.'''' This 
art, says Bacon, " I will divide into three parts : the doctrine concerning 
the organ of discourse, the doctrine concerning the Method of Discourse, 
and the doctrine concerning the Illustration or adornment of discourse." 

The organ of speech is words and letters, " but this art of transmission 
has some other children besides words and letters." 

" The notes of things are of two kinds ... Of the former are hiero- 
glyphics and gestures ; of the latter, real characters." 

" Gestures are as transitory hieroglyphics ; for as uttered words fly 
away, but written words stand, so hieroglyphics expressed by gestures 
pass, but expressed in pictures remain." Book VI. ch. 1. 

The foundation of the Baconian philosophy is a complete and accurate 
natural and experimental history as materials for induction. 

" The foundations of experience (our sole resource.) " he says, " have 
hitherto failed completely or have been very weak, nor has a store or col- 
lection of particular facts capable of improving the mind or in any way 
satisfactory been either sought after or amassed. . . . We must begin, 
therefore, to entertain hopes of natural philosophy, then only when we 
have a better compilation of natural history, its real basis and support.'' 
Nov. Org. Book I. Aph. 98. 

And in his " Preparative towards a Natural and Experimental His- 
tory " he gives a " description " and sets out " the figure and plan " or 
idea of such a history, as he deems necessary as a foundation for philo- 
sophy. 

But materials for induction must not only be collected ; they must be 
arranged and digested into Tables- — of Invention or Discovery, so called 
— so that the mind can act freely upon them and thus make an inquisition 
and induction. So apprehensive was Bacon lest his method should prove 
too abstruse for popular comprehension that he designed to set it forth in 
examples which should render it obvious, as it were, to the sense. In his 
Cogitata et Visa, which was unpublished in his lifetime, but written 
about 1607 (and therefore in all probability antedating the play of Cym- 
beline), he says "that it appeared to him all important, that tables of in- 
vention or formulas of a legitimate inquisition, that is, collections oj 



8 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

particulars, arranged for the work of the understanding, in certain sub- 
jects should be set forth as an example or visible representation of his 
method." 

Of the above Arts and Doctrines the following analysis aims at show- 
ing that the play of Cymbeline illustrates the Art of Invention in that 
branch of it which is called The Invention of Arts or the Interpretation 
of Nature, 

Also the Art of Judging in that branch of it which Bacon considers 
the true and legitimate Induction wherein all proof is made by Experi- 
ence. 

That it also furnishes examples of the Art of Memory in that branch 
of it which treats of the " helps of the memory" 

That it also illustrates the Art of Transmission in that branch of it 
which treats of the organ of speech and more particularly of the doctrine 
of " gestures as living hieroglyphics or signs significant. 

And that the play is founded on the idea of History and more partic- 
ularly Natural History, according to Bacon's plan of " a history as a 
foundation for philosophy/' which together with the illustrations of The 
Art of Judging and The Art of Invention above mentioned, renders it 
a pattern in dramatic form of what Bacon sometimes calls " A Natural 
Story and Inquisition that draws down to the sense " the method of 
Induction. 



CYMBELINE. 

Cymbeline, viewed as a work of art, is a model in dra- 
matic form of a Chronicle History, a species of writing in which 
a large growth of Romance is engrafted on a slender historical 
stock. Cymbeline is history, so far as it treats of public events, 
of intrigues for the succession of the crown, of the reception 
of ambassadors, and of wars waged for the national defense or 
honor ; it is Romance, so far as it treats of the private and per- 
sonal fortunes of its leading characters ; and is called Cymbeline, 
after the chief historical personage, a title, which without suggest- 
ing any particular story or series of incidents, stands for the 
events of a fabulous king's reign. 

History is a record of human experience, and it must, if truly 
written, be consistent with all experience, for there is one heart 
and conscience common to all men, and every individual man 
contains within himself, potentially, the history of the race. The 
facts of history, like the experiences of individuals, are infinitely 
diversified in form, but as they are but effects referable to prin- 
ciples in the nature of man, they are intelligible to all who share 
in human thought and sympathy. Experience is the ground of 
all knowledge and skill : by observation and experiment, we 
become acquainted with the occult virtues and effects of external 
things and accumulate the facts of science ; and by trial and de- 
velopment of our instincts and motives, we gain a knowledge of 
our own natures, and thus, generally, of human nature. This last 
knowledge opens to us an insight into the operation of moral 
causes ; by it we read the hearts of others, interpret motives by 
actions, and predict conduct from character. Experience, there- 
fore, leads to the knowledge of the inward truth and meaning of 
the outward fact and sign, particularly in the moral world : and 
as history is a record of experience, it teaches us fche virtue and 
effective force of men, of which their actions are the external 
types. 

To evolve the hidden moral causes of actions and thereby 



10 CYMBELINE. 

determine the comparative worth and consequently the relative 
place of the agents, is the aim of History, the value of which 
consists in the examples it sets of the heroism and the weakness, 
the height and the degradation of the human soul. To store the 
memory with names and dates avails nothing, but we plod through 
the records of the past to learn the capabilities of our nature as 
evinced in actual trial from which only can we learn the truth. 

The essence or idea, or to use the Baconian term, the "form " 
of History, then, is & judgment on the natures of men as proved 
by experience, and the consequent assignment of them to their 
proper place or rank. The historian only does for human nature 
what the man of science does for physical nature — interpret the 
properties of objects by experiment. 

The incident which originates the movement of the plot is the 
marriage of Imogen, a princess and heiress of the British crown, 
to Posthumus, who, though styled " a beggar " by reason of his 
low estate, unites to the noblest natural qualities the breeding 
and education of a prince. Out of this match, so fit on moral 
grounds, yet so incongruous when judged by the artificial stand- 
ard of birth and wealth, there grows the consideration of what is 
true rank and true worth, and the relations of Man to Place, but 
place here is not confined to high place or great place, or to that 
precedency so dear, as Chaucer tells us, to aldermen's wives, — 

" For it is full fain to be ycleped madame 
And for to gon to vigiles all before 
.And have their mantels royally ybore," — 

but comprises the profession, vocation, estate, grade, and even 
nationality of every individual whatever, and in fact refers to any 
and every situation, which can, through difference of rank, con- 
dition, or country affect the judgment or feelings towards men and 
things. 

As History is experience and experience life, or at least such 
knowledge of it as is derived from actual trial, a drama in order 
to be a model of History, must portray life in no particular phase 
of it, but in those general features that are common to all men. 
The representation must be broad and comprehensive enough to 
be typical of all life, social and individual, and illustrate those 
primary principles that underlie all human actions as well as the 
moral sentiments by which such actions are adjudged worthy of 



CYMBELINE. 11 

praise or blame. Of these principles, a full statement of which 
would constitute the natural history of the human mind, and out 
of which as motives of action all civil history flows, the following 
appear to be the chief ones that enter into the scheme of the 
piece. This scheme, it should be observed, is but the unfolding 
of those various conceptions which are implicated in " the idea" 
of History and which are embodied and represented in the char- 
acters and incidents of the piece. 

Human life, as revealed by sense and experience, is a current 
of sensations and feelings, excited by the objects of the external 
world, or by the workings of our own minds which, as they seem 
to conduce to our good and confer pleasure, or, on the other hand, 
inflict evil or pain, awaken likes or dislikes, desires or aversions, 
love or hate. Of these two cardinal principles, love and hate, or 
more generally, sympathy and antipathy, all the desires and 
affections which can operate as motives on the will appear to be 
but different degrees and modifications. These range through 
numberless shades from the slightest emotions to the wildest 
passions ; but the more usual forms of sympathy are love, pity, 
admiration, joy, and those lighter pleasurable feelings, such as 
content, gladness, etc., arising from the manifold occurrences of 
common experience ; while, of antipathy, the more familiar in- 
stances are hate, anger, resentment in many various degrees, 
grief (including penitence and contrition), envy, jealousy, re- 
venge, together with the thousand chagrins and vexations that 
spring from the petty annoyances of life. These feelings are 
instincts of our nature. In their lowest forms common examples 
may be found in the consents or disagreements between the 
appetites and the objects they like or loathe ; or on a higher 
plane, in the admiration or pleasure imparted by the beautiful 
and harmonious or in the distaste or aversion excited by the 
deformed and discordant, or in the moral world instances may be 
met with in the instinctive approbation awarded to what is noble 
in purpose or conduct, or the natural indignation or contempt 
felt at what is base. These sympathies and antipathies are kept 
in play by the objects which on all sides are ever soliciting our 
attention; or, as it may be, by the reaction of our own minds; 
and of these objects our constant occupation is to estimate the 
value; to know which to choose, which to reject, and io form a 
scale of things, according to their real worth: but of all causes 



12 CYMBELIXE. 

that operate upon our feelings, nothing is so potent, nor is there 
anything of which it is so necessary to form a correct judgment. 
as the character and conduct of our fellow-beings. These last, 
like all other objects in nature, excite our emotions, but they work 
upon us to an incalculably higher degree, for the reason that they 
are possessed of like passions with ourselves. So powerful is the 
bond of sympathy, that like an instrument of which the strings, 
untouched and silent, yet vibrate in response to the tone that 
accords with them, every man is affected, often unconsciously to 
himself, by every exhibition of human feeling that falls under 
his notice. Thus a common heart or universal sympathy binds 
men in one brotherhood, while a common frailty and mortality 
necessitate mutual help and service. The whole practical inter- 
course of life is but an exchange of services. 

The feelings and passions — which are familiarly spoken of as 
" the heart," and are popularly supposed to have their seat in 
that organ — vary in individuals according as different strains 
of blood mingle in their veins, thus leading to natural differ- 
ences in the dispositions and tempers of men. and out of this 
variety arise the subdivisions of society into different vocations. 
professions, and pursuits, so that the exchange of services, par- 
ticularly in a highly artificial state of society, becomes to a great 
degree a mere matter of bargain and sale, and is estimated by a 
money value : yet the original nature of these services as dependent 
upon sympathy and love is still seen in the offices of domestic 
life as well as in those of courtesy, charity, and friendship. The 
ordinary formulas of civility are professions of kindness and ser- 
vice. Out of these differences among men. also, naturally springs 
the relation of master and servant, the type of all rank, which at 
the present day is become, in most instances, a matter of contract 
and hire, but which originally grew out of the protection and 
bounty of the strong to the weak, and was a tie of loyalty — " of 
love and vows and obedience" — as is represented between 
Posthumus and Pisanio. 

The doctrine of the piece that, notwithstanding differences of 
place, men are bound up in one brotherhood, is stated in the 
following lines : — 

*• Ai'v. An "'<:■ not brot) 
Imo. So yuan and man should 



CYMBELINE. 13 

But clay and clay differ in dignity 
Whose dust is both alike" 

Act IV. Sc. 2. 

Notwithstanding a common brotherhood and a common mortal- 
ity, there is a scale of men, a rank inherent in human nature ; 
and this depends upon love manifested in services, of which the 
gradation reaches from the most menial offices to those exalted 
acts of self-sacrifice and heroism that are the glory of humanity. 
Great services, implying greatness of heart and mind and con- 
ferring important benefits, receive through the admiration and 
gratitude of the world, great rewards ; and love naturally draws 
after it wealth and power and station, together with that rever- 
ence which is the tribute men gladly pay to worth and which, 
consequently, is the bond of order and the essence of civility. 

" Though mean and mighty, rotting 
Together, have one dust, yet reverence 
(That angel of the world) doth make distinction 
Of place 'tween high and low" 

Act IV. Sc. 2. 

As Ben Jonson puts it, " goodness gives greatness and great- 
ness worship," and even in so small a society as that formed by 
Belarius and his reputed sons, the same rule prevails. 

" He that strikes 
The venison first shall be lord o' the feast: 
To him the other two shall minister ; 
And we will fear no poison, which attends 
In place of greater state." 

" You, Polydore, have proved best woodman, and 
Are master of the feast : Cadwal and I 
Will play the cook and servant • 't is our match ; 
The sweat of industry would dry and die, 
But for the end it works to." 

Act III. Sc. 6. 

So too, Bacon says, " Honor is or should be the place of virtue," 
and the chief value he attributes to place lies in the augmented 
means it affords of doing good. " Power to do good is the true 
and lawful end of aspiring; for good thoughts, though Grod 
accept them, yet towards men, are little better than good dreams, 
except that they be put in act and thai cannot be without power 
and place as the vantage and commanding ground." Hist nut ion 



14 CYMBELIXE. 

and honor, once acquired by the virtue of the ancestor, are on 
the theory of the transniissibility of qualities by blood, continued 
to his descendants, for, though men of eminence but seldom 
transmit their merit or their force to " that unfeathered two-legged 
thino\ a son," the notions of blood and family are so far founded 
in nature as to be universally received and m most countries 
furnish a ground for a hereditary nobility and regulate the succes- 
sion of the crown. This subject is thus touched upon in the 

play :— 

" noble strain ! 
worthiness of nature ! breed of greatness ! 
Cowards father cowards and base things sire base : 
Nature hath meal and bran, contempt and grace." 

" O thou goddess, 
Thou divine nature, how thyself thou blazon'st 
In these two princely boys ! " 

" 'T is wonder 
That an invisible instinct should frame them 
To royalty unlearn'd ; honor untaught ; 
Civility not seen from other : valor 
That wildly grows in them, but yields a crop 
As if it had been sow'd." 

Act IV. Sc. 2. 

The exception to the rule is stated in the case of Cloten. 

" That such a crafty devil as is his mother 
Should yield the world this ass ! a woman that 
Bears all down with her brain ; and this her son 
Cannot take two from twenty, for his heart. 
And leave eighteen." 

Act II. Sc. 1. 

But " nobility commonly abateth industry," wealth and station 
are apt to produce degeneracy through self-indulgence and to 
create special sympathies and class-feelings, which narrow and 
restrict that broad love which theoretically lies at the bottom of a 
noble life : and the pride of rank, together with the uncertainty 
and exceptions to which hereditary excellence is exposed, in very 
many cases separates the true aristocracy from the factitious : so 
that in every community there is found a double scale of rank, 
one of wealth and birth dependent upon fortune ; the other of 
character and moral worth, which is substantial and finds recogni- 



CYMBELINE. 15 

tion in the esteem of mankind. This latter scale, dependent as it 
is upon kindness and services, that is, upon doing good, cul- 
minates in a character which, though old as love and valor, has 
been known since the days of mediaeval chivalry as the gentle- 
man, a name which in its original acceptation implies blood and 
family, but to which few of any stock are entitled ; for a true 
gentleman or a true lady is the summit of human nature, the very 
flower and perfection of high-bred humanity. In the language 
of the piece " it is all that makes a man both without and within," 
and resting on an essential basis of truth, love and magnanimity, 
it requires for its highest type all the graces and accomplishments 
of both intellect and person. 

Men are judged of by their motives and purposes — which, of 
course, denote their natures — and this not merely in important 
matters but in all the conduct of their lives. Every word and 
action springs from a motive and has a purpose ; and words, 
looks, gestures, and actions are the outward signs of the inward 
mind and meaning, which we read by an instinctive sympathy. 
And according as we discern motives to be good and purposes to 
be beneficial, we express our sympathy in admiration and applause, 
and, on the other hand, if motives and ends appear malicious and 
hurtful, we feel scorn and contempt ; in the one case, elevating- 
men in the scale and in the other degrading them. In judging of 
men, however, in practical life it does not appear that we com- 
pare them with the ideal of perfect humanity, which would be too 
high a standard for ordinary use. But in the first instance we 
are ourselves the standard with regard to the merit or demerit of 
other men, 1 for it is only by imagining ourselves in their place 
and asking of our own hearts and consciences what would be fit 
or becoming or right for us to do under like circumstances that 
we are enabled to form an estimate of their conduct. Each indi- 
vidual generalizes from himself to the whole race, and unhesitat- 
ingly asserts that what he feels under given circumstances every 
other man must or will or ought to feel. Thus each man makes 
himself the standard with regard to the conduct and consequently 

1 "Every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of tlu> Like taeultj 
in another. I judge of your sight by my sight, of your ear by my ear, of your reason 
by my reason, of your resentment by my resentment, of your love 1>\ my Lore. I 
neither have nor can have any other way of judging about them." Smith's VMory 
of Moral Sentiments. 



16 CYMBEL1NE. 

the place to be assigned to every other man. He sees that other 
men are either above or below him until from observation and 
experience he acquires a notion of an average man, a certain 
standard of force and merit which most men reach ; and although 
there may be many perhaps who greatly transcend this height, 
vet these we do not judge of in ordinary practical life by any 
ideal formed of the perfect hero or true gentleman, but estimate 
them as rising to a higher or lower degree above that ordinary 
level which experience tells us is the usual mean proportion of 
excellence among men. It may be considered also that the ideal 
furnishes no uniform standard, for it will vary according to the 
sensibility or culture of the mind that forms it: but the average 
man, being drawn from experience and actual life, must be about 
the same in the minds of all men. And this average seems to be 
the ordinary standard of men in the affairs of life. 

But however accurate the standard of judgment and whether 
the same be the ideal or the average of humanity as taught by 
experience, or both, 1 as some suppose, the judgment needs to be 
protected from the errors which arise from the deceptions of the 
sense and the dissimulation of the world : for notwithstanding 
true service is the measure of moral force and is alone entitled to 
the prizes of life, many will seek preferment by flattery and pre- 
tended admiration of the powerful and great. And here again 
comes in the play of sympathy, since all acting and dissimulation 
are carried out by sympathetic imitation. He is the best actor 
who most deeply sympathizes with the part he represents. These 
arts are set before us in the very opening of the play in the pre- 
tended sympathy of the courtiers with the anger of the king. 



; You do uot meet a man but frowns : our bloods 
Xo more obey the heavens, than our courtiers 
Still seem as does the king. 

But not a courtier. 
Although they wear their faces to the bent 
Of the king's looks, hath a heart that is not 
Glad at the thing they scowl at." 

Act I. Sc. 1. 






B 



But dissimulation is by no means confined to the courts of the 
great. On the contrary, the practice is universal, pervading all 
ranks and conditions. AVherever man has a point to gain, he seeks 

1 Adam Smith. Theory of Moral Sentiments. 



CYMBELINE. 17 

to please those whose services or aid he needs. There are but 
few friends of that candor of mind that is always free from insin- 
cerity ; the fondest lovers sometimes ■ dissemble and brothers of 
the same blood often, in their intercourse, wear a double face and 
talk with a double tongue. To judge correctly, therefore, of the 
motives of men, a deep knowledge of the world and of the human 
heart is necessary. Our only guide is experience. We are in- 
cessantly employed in reading the words and actions of those 
around us as expressive of their motives and character ; and the 
main business of our lives may be said to be the interpretation of 
human nature by trial and experience. 

But there is another and greater cause of error even than the 
deceits of the world and that is the perversion of judgment, 
which results from our own feelings being almost always enlisted ; 
but above all are we led astray by the whisperings of that arch 
flatterer that every man carries in his own bosom. Inordinate 
self-esteem vitiates our standard of judgment ; we rate ourselves 
too high and others too low ; and this error is greatly increased 
by those special sympathies and class-feelings that have their 
root in difference of rank, vocation, and condition. This, too, is 
common to all ranks ; the low being as apt to misjudge the feel- 
ings of the high as the high are those of the low. This error also 
can only be corrected by experience ; and just as the value of 
different minerals or plants is known by experiment, so it is by 
actual trial of ourselves and others that the real worth and rela- 
tive difference of men can be proven. 

Not only difference of place taken metaphorically as rank, but 
difference of place taken literally, as locality, has influence to 
produce special sympathies that grossly mislead the judgment. 
Such sympathies indulged in a proper degree are often among 
the most meritorious of our sentiments, — a love of country, 
for instance, which, however, when allowed to run into excess, 
becomes a narrow and malignant prejudice. For the cure of this 
ultra-patriotism, which disdains and misjudges everything foreign 
as inferior and worthless, travel or experience of other countries 
is the best remedy. It is on the preference which every one gives 
to his own country and all that pertains to it, that is founded the 
wager between Posthumus and Iachimo. Each asserts the superi- 
ority of the ladies of his own land. This national pride, a speoies 
of sympathy arising from difference of locality, is largely illus- 



I 



18 CYMBELINE. 

trated throughout the piece, as it conspicuously violates the 
universal sympathy which should exist between men as men. 
Confined, however, within proper bounds, it is admirable. The 
following are some examples. Not to speak of the patriotic spirit 
that breathes through the addresses of Cymbeline and the Queen 
in reply to the Roman ambassador's demand for tribute, how 
finely Roman is the brief comment made by Lucius upon the 
sentence of death passed upon him : — 

" Sufficeth 
A Roman with a Roman's heart can suffer ; 
Augustus lives to think on it." 

Pisanio avows his determination to die for his country : — 

" These present wars shall find I love my country 
Even to the note o' the king, or I '11 die in them," — 

and lachimo attributes even to the air of Britain an antipathy to 
him on account of the injuries done by him to Imogen : — 

" I have belied a lady, 
The princess of this country, and the air on 't 
Revengingly enfeebles me." 

Even Cloten exhibits patriotism. It is noteworthy, however, 
that Imogen, the princess of Britain, in whose well-balanced 
character all proper sympathies have place, but in which no 
excess of feeling begets a false pride, shows her sound judgment 
in the liberal sentiment with which, with a true love for her own 
land, she still makes a fair estimate of others. 

" Hath Britain all the sun that shines ? Day, night, 
Are they not but in Britain ? I' the world's volume 
Our Britain seems as of 't, but not in it, 
In a great pool a swan's nest. Prythee think 
There 's livers out of Britain." 

It being the object of History to assign the causes of events, 
and award to each actor on the historical stage the rank to which 
his merits entitle him, it only does in a literary and artistic way 
for the men of the past what every man within his own sphere is 
constantly doing throughout his life with regard to the men of 
the present, that is, judging their actions, motives, plans, and pur- 
poses, and assigning to each actor the place he may justly claim. 
This play, therefore, in which the relation of Man to Kank or 



CYMBELINE. 19 

Difference of Place is the subject, is an epitome of History and 
of the principles by which it makes up its record ; in other words, 
it takes the " form " or idea of History as its constructive law. 

But to render Cymbeline a dramatic embodiment of such 
principles, it must present them in the concrete and in present 
action. What in History is past experience must become in the 
play a present trial; what History represents as accomplished 
ends must be seen as operative causes ; what History sets forth 
as a complication of purposes steadily tending to a predestined 
end must appear in the play as a network of intrigue involving 
the characters in the greatest perplexities and subjecting them to 
the apparent dominion of Chance ; what in History is philosophi- 
cal comment upon a series of events must become moral reflections 
or maxims of prudence suggested by particular incidents ; what 
in History are citations of written authorities must in its dra- 
matic imitation be oral narratives of individual experiences. All 
these conditions are satisfied in Cymbeline. It is a record of trials 
that test the relative worth and force of the characters ; it lays its 
scenes in various and distant places from which move different trains 
of causes and effects, giving rise by mutual interaction to the great- 
est perplexities, and producing the strangest chances ; it exhibits 
characters whose discourse is rich in aphorisms and whose judg- 
ments are guided by the lessons of experience ; it shows private 
purposes made providentially conducive to great national ends ; 
and it concludes by assembling together from distant quarters 
and by a great variety of motives all the characters, whose nar- 
ratives of what they each know or have experienced, like the 
scattered proofs of History collected to one point, make up the 
full record of the truth, placing each personage in a proper posi- 
tion and showing the connection and dependency of the events so 
as to account for the final result as well as for all the varied 
action of the piece. 

This wild legend, therefore, in which " the folly of the fiction, 
the absurdity of the conduct, the confusion of the names and 
manners of different times, and the impossibility of the events in 
any system of life " (to adopt the letter, though not the spirit 
of Johnson's sweeping condemnation of the play) appear to be 
designed only as romantic features, which with exquisite taste the 
poet stamps upon his chronicle, is an epitome of the principles 
on which History makes its statements and founds its deoisions 
upon men and events. 



20 CYMBELINE. 

History, inasmuch as it treats of past transactions, necessarily 
grounds its judgments upon testimony or the relations of others ; 
whereas, in the daily intercourse of practical life, which is His- 
tory, living and present (and of which Cymheline is an image) 
men meet face to face and judge of each other by personal obser- 
vation. In this respect, the conclusions they form are similai 
to those arrived at in natural Science, which decides upon the 
qualities and properties of objects by test and experiment. A 
collection of such experiments is what Bacon terms a Natural 
History, and Cymbeline, so far as it records the trials and expe- 
riences of its personages and the development of their instincts, is 
a Natural History of Sympathy and Antipathy in Man, 

But this latter is wrapped up in the more general Chronicle- 
History that forms the acting play. 

In the moral as in the material world, experience is the only 
sure ground of truth, but with regard to moral facts, the instincts * 
and sympathies of the heart are an intuitive or spontaneous expe- 
rience, which springs to life at a touch and is coextensive with 
the moral nature of man. It is, in fact, self-knowledge, and is 
seated in the conscience, and we decide upon the motives of 
others under given circumstances with all the confidence the 
conscience passes judgment upon our own. In imagination, we 
put ourselves in their place. This principle is the ground of 
our belief in all statement of moral fact and of our sympathy with 
all delineations of human nature, whether in history or fiction. 
Aside from the observations of our senses and the intuition of 
our hearts, we have no assurance of the truth. All the rest of 
our knowledge we take upon testimony, but testimony receives 
credit in the vast majority of instances only so far as it is con 
formable to our experience. 

The instinctive power of sympathy to realize what we have 
never seen and know only through the relation of another, is 
beautifully exemplified in the fire and spirit with which the young 
princes put into action the stories of the old soldier, Belarius. 

"This Polydore, 
The heir of Cymbeline and Britain, whom 
The king his father call'd Guiderius, — love ! 
When on my three-foot stool I sit, and tell 
The warlike feats I've done, his spirits fly out 
Into my story, say : ' Thus mine enemy fell 






S 

: 

s 



CYMBELINE. 21 

And thus I set my foot on 's neck," even then 
The princely blood flows in his cheek, he sweats. 
Strains his young nerves, and puts himself in posture 
That acts my words. The younger brother, Cadwal, 
(Once Arviragus) in as like figure 
Strikes life into my speech and shows much more 
His own conceiving.'" 

Act III. Sc. 3. 

Against the inward assurances and perfect convictions wrought 
by experience, no written nor verbal statement nor other second- 
ary evidence derived from mere external signs should be allowed 
to prevail. It is Posthumus's neglect of such an experience as 
evidence of Imogen's truth and his reliance upon inferences from 
deceptive outward proofs of her incontinency that give rise to the 
main interest and tragic incidents of the play. Iachimo's story and 
oath, and particularly his possession of the bracelet, are to Posthu- 
mus a conclusive proof of his wife's guilt. It is " the cognizance 
of her incontinency." Yet had he interpreted this sign by the 
experience 1 he himself recounts, and which prove her " as chaste 
as unsunn'd snow" (see Act II. Sc. 5), neither Iachimo's crafty 
story nor the possession of the jewel could have imposed upon his 
judgment nor brought him to any conclusion but that some deep 
villainy had been practiced. 

On the other hand, the use of signs and tokens as corrobora- 
tive testimonies of a true report are instanced in the mole upon 
the neck of Guiderius and in the mantle in which Arviragus was 
wrapped. 

" Bel. This gentleman, my Cadwal, Arviragus, 

Your younger princely son ; he, sir, was lapp'd 

In a most curious mantle, wrought by the hand 

Of his queen mother, which, for more probation, 

I can, with ease produce. 

Cym. Guiderius had 

Upon his neck a mole, a sanguine star ; 

It was a mark of wonder. 

1 In Boccaccio's story (9 Nov., 2 Day) the unquestionable original of the most 
striking part of the plot of Cymbeline, the injured wife, after haying drawn hex 
husband and the villain who had slandered her into her power, upbraids the former 
for having placed more confidence in the falsehoods of a stranger than in the > 
Hence he had of her truth. The original runs thus: "11 marito, piu credulo aUe 
altrui falsita che alia veritb) da lui per lemge experiensia potuta conoscere, la h 
accidere." This passage, together with the mode of proof adopted bj Ajnbrogiolo, 
the Iachimo of the story, by signs and notes, seems to have suggested to di«> dra- 
matist the fitness ol* the story to illustrate the art of judgin I a hich treats of proofs) 
including the spirit, not to Bay the letter, of the [nduotive Logic 



22 CYMBELINE. 

Bel. This is he 

Who hath upon him still that natural stamp : 
It was wise nature's end in the donation 
To be his evidence nowP 

Act V., Sc. 5. 

A Chronicle-History has two sides, one of Civil History and 
one of Romance. Of these, the first is represented in the play by 
the scenes between Cymbeline and Lucius, the Roman Ambassa- 
dor, in which the latter demands the payment of tribute and de- 
clares war ; and also in the landing of the Roman army at Milford 
and the subsequent battle with the Britons. The Romance of the 
play is represented in the private fortunes and adventures of the 
personages of the piece ; and with reference to these and their 
private relations, the law of universal love which is applicable in 
its broadest features to men standing in international relations, be- 
comes more specific and definite. In treating of the " Exemplar 
of Good" or the idea of moral goodness, Bacon speaks of " the 
good of man, which respecteth or beholdeth society and which 
goes by the name of Duty, which is subdivided into the common 
duty of every man as a member of the State ; the other, the re- 
spective duty or the duty of every man in his profession, vocation, 
and place" And he instances as appertaining to this branch 
of morality " the duties of husband and wife, parent and child, 
master and servant, as likewise the laws of friendship, of gratitude, 
neighborhood, and all other proportionate ditties" 

It is obvious at a glance that these are precisely the relations 
which exist between the principal personages of the piece and 
which call distinctly for " proportionate duties." But duties, 
that is, love and service, are proportionate when suited to each 
particular case ; and therefore the great law of sympathy with re- 
spect to private relations may be stated as the rendering of that 
love and service which is suitable in every respect to the relations 
in which we are placed. It implies the proper ascendency of the 
reason over the sympathies and passions. It is the rule of con- 
gruity and fitness; " the fair and fit" in morals as in manners; 
the strict and habitual observance of which constitutes a character 
to which the world has ever been ready to award supreme rank — 
the perfect gentleman or lady. 

In the characters of the play, we must look for embodiments of 
the main principles embraced by the moral scheme of the piece. 
This scheme is an expansion of the fundamental idea, which, in 



CYMBELINE. 23 * 

the case of Cymheline, is that of History or a true judgment on 
men by proof and experience. This grows out of our instinctive 
desire to know the qualities of the men we encounter and deal 
with in order that we may judge of their worth and rank them 
accordingly. But to do this with precision requires a judgment 
free from bias and error, whereas it is often, not to say always, 
unduly swayed by sympathies and antipathies, or say, affections 
and passions, which make false estimates of men and things. The 
personages of the piece will, therefore, be differenced by the cor- 
rect or incorrect exercise of their judgments upon men and the 
objects of their love and hate generally. 

But besides this metaphysical basis of the character, the per- 
sonages have also a poetic side or one colored by circumstances, 
which gives them respectively an individuality and special por- 
traiture, but these two sides so concur that the one generally 
elucidates the other. Being offshoots of the same main trunk, 
the dramatis personce are all necessarily related, though super- 
ficially they may be greatly diversified. 

In Imogen, we have an impersonation of the organic idea, the 
fair and fit, which practically is conduct that, by a perfectly cor- 
rect exercise of the judgment, befits the situation in which the 
agent is placed. 

Exquisite beauty of person, the manners of a princess and the 
skill of a housewife, a playful fancy, deep feeling, rare courage 
and magnanimity, are qualities which blend as adjuncts or em- 
bellishments with a love and truth no trials can shake to form 
the character of Imogen the gentlewoman or, more technically, 
" the lady" But that which is rarest in her character is the per- 
fect balance of her faculties ; both in thought and action she ex- 
hibits the just and proper ascendency of reason. A princess by 
birth, she yet holds rank for nothing in comparison with moral 
worth. Her mind habitually harbors noble thoughts ; she is mag- 
nanimous without effort. To her great heart, a kingdom is but a 
toy compared with the vast space filled by a brother's love. 
When the king, upon the restoration of the princes, tells her, — 

" Imogen, 
By this you have lost a kingdom," 

she replies, — 

" No, my Lord, 
I 'vo gained (fro worlds by ii 



24 CYMBELINE. 

a mode of reckoning that measures rather the greatness of the 
soul that uses it than the profit or loss of the exchange mentioned. 
An impersonation of truth and love, she is the pattern of cour- 
tesy, the rule of nobleness. Though she is a king's daughter, her 
ladyhood is of higher descent. Like Chaucer's gentlewoman, — 

"Her bountie (goodness) corueth all of God, we of the strain 
Of which she was ygendred and ybore ; " 

and her truth and sympathy and readiness to serve, like her 
beauty, shine with as bright a lustre in the cave of the outlaws as 
in the court of Cymbeline. Her conventional rank seems never 
present to her mind, but when her disdain is aroused by baseness, 
then her assumption of dignity as a princess gives double force to 
her scorn. 

An intimate blending of the action of the heart and head, a 
union of sweetness and strength, is the marked characteristic of 
her nature. Her faculties are in perfect equipoise ; neither feel- 
ing nor fancy clouds her judgment ; nor does her judgment un- 
duly repress the impulses of her heart. Reflection and feeling 
with her go hand-in-hand, and in her direst extremities every ex- 
perience is transmuted by her active mind into moral truth. Her 
soliloquy, when she is lost in the forest and at point to perish with 
hunger, is a good instance of this perfect balance of sensibility 
and judgment. 

" Two beggars told me 

I could not lose my way : will poor folks lie, 

That have afflictions on them, knowing 't is 

A punishment or trial ? Yes : no wonder, 

When rich ones scarce tell true. To lapse in fullness 

Is sorer than to lie for need; and falsehood 

Is worse in kings than beggars. My dear lord ! 

Thou art. one of the false ones. Now I think on thee, 

My hunger 9 s gone; but even before, I was 

At point to sink for food. But what is this ? 

Here is a path to it ; 't is some savage hold : 

I were best not call ; I dare not call : yet famine 

Ere clean it overthrow nature makes it valiant. 

Plenty and peace breed cowards : hardness ever 

Of hardiness is mother." 

Act III. Sc. 6. 

The same harmonious action of mind and feeling is also well 
illustrated in the following lines, in which moreover is enunciated 
the radical truth that experience is the corrective of false testi- 
mony and the only sure source of knowledge. 



CYMBELINE. 25 

" These are kind creatures. Gods, what lies 1 've heard ! 
Our courtiers say all 's savage but at court : 
Experience, 0, thou disprov'st report ! 
The imperious seas breed monsters, for the dish 
Poor tributary rivers as sweet fish." 

This clear apprehension of the truth of things gives Imogen 
wonderful force. Her trials but make her wiser and stronger, 
and our pity for her distress is in a manner checked by our ad- 
miration of her moral strength. She is as practical withal as she 
is reflective and her executive ability corresponds with her ready 
sympathy and prompt judgment. Under the greatest afflictions 
she gives up to no useless grief, but burying her feelings in her 
heart, turns with courage and industry to the next duty that offers. 
In her strength of character she is independent of circumstances 
and superior to chance or change. 

" Every attempt 
She 's soldier to and does abide it 
With a prince's courage. " 

After the murder, as she thinks it, of her husband, she enters, 
disguised as a boy, into the service of Lucius, a noble Roman, 
who thus describes her : — 

" Never master had 
A page so kind, so duteous, diligent, 
So tender over his occasions, true, 
So feat, so nurse-like." 

Act. V. Sc. 5. 

With such fitness does this true lady act her part in whatever 
strange or unnatural sphere fortune may cast her ! 

So, again, in the cave of Belarius, her housewifely skill is put 
before us* while her " angel-like " singing reminds us of her 
courtly education. 

" How angel-like he sings ! 
But his neat cookery ! 1 He cut our roots in characters 
And sauc'd our broths, as Juno had been sick 

And he her dieter." 

Act IV. Sc. 2. 

1 Imogen's cookery, though tasteful in every sense of the word, draws a sneer from 
the Female Quixote ; and the commentators, through fear that this accomplishment 
may vulgarize the character, hasten to explain that cooking formed part oi fche edu- 
cation of a, princess in those early days. Hut why go baok so far? Our reoeipl 
books tell ns fch,at the cheese-cakes known as kk Maids of Honor." were -<> called from 
the skill with which they were compounded by fche high-born dames that formed fche 
stately court of Elizabeth ! 



26 CYMBELINE. 

Thus she is always in harmony with her situation and renders 
whatever good service it calls for. Her judgment, though some- 
times misled by ignorance of facts or deceptions of the sense, 
never errs in matters of conduct. Her first words show how 
clearly she reads the dissimulation of the smooth-tongued Queen. 
" O dissembling courtesy ! how fine this tyrant 
Can tickle where she wounds." 

Act I. Sc. 2. 

With regard to her own actions, she always decides upon what 
is fittest. Upon receiving tidings that her husband is at Milford 
and desires her presence she expresses her joy as well as the 
fondness of her love in the playful impatience she affects at the 
length of time required for the journey ; but as soon as this indul- 
gence of feeling has reached the limit of decorum, her practical 
judgment steps in and decides her course. 

" But this is foolery : 
Go, bid my woman feign a sickness : say 
She '11 home to her father : and provide me presently 
A riding-suit, no costlier than would fit 
A franklin's housewife."' 

Act III. Sc. 2. 

The more the character of Imogen is submitted to the test, the 
finer it shows. Her severest trial proceeds from the jealousy of 
Posthumus. Ignorant of the villainy that has been practiced upon 
him, and recalling the slanders of Iachirno, she can see in his 
charges against her honor and in his orders that she be put to 
death only proofs of his own perjury. ' Every circumstance of the 
situation tends to awaken a sense of injury and justify resent- 
ment ; yet, notwithstanding this terrible wound to her love, she 
retains her sweetness of nature. Her grief is wholly unselfish, 
and she pours out her profound sorrow over the wreck of her 
husband's honor without one trace of angry or jealous or vindic- 
tive feeling. She mourns over it as destroying all faith in what- 
ever is goodly or gallant in man, but utters no word of personal 
resentment. This forbearance seems due less to self-command 
than to an innate nobility of disposition that is incapable of any 
unhandsome or undignified feeling. Struck to the heart by his 
apparent cruelty and injustice as she is, death would be a relief ; 
bat with her, true heroism consists in living and acting, not in 
yielding to despair. As soon as Pisanio suggests that Posthumus 
has been made the victim of some villainous practice and points 



CYMBELINE. 27 

out a course whereby the truth may be discovered, she embraces 
the plan ; and strong in acting as in suffering, enters with forti- 
tude upon its execution. With all the sensibility that befits a 
heroine of . romance, she is devoid of every morbid feeling and is 
governed on all occasions by a practical common sense. 

The unerring judgment which ensures such supreme fitness of 
conduct carries all our sympathies with her. She is always ad- 
mirable ; and her actions are a succession of surprises for their 
nobleness and generosity. 

After all the trials she endures from her husband's injustice, 
the only reproach that falls from her lips is the affectionate 
remonstrance : — 

" Why did you cast your wedded lady from you ? " 

And at last, when restored to her position as a princess and to 
her father's favor, her graceful promise to the captive Lucius is 
a closing instance of that sympathy and readiness to serve, which 
are the soul of goodness and courtesy. 

" My good master, 
I will yet do you service." 

Act V. Sc. 5. 

No touch is omitted that can lend a grace to this lofty and 
lovely lady ; she lives and moves in an atmosphere of beauty ; and 
even old Belarius, when he sees his cave lighted up by her pres- 
ence, exclaims : — 

" By Jupiter, an angel, or if not, 
An earthly paragon ! Behold divineness 
No elder than a boy." 

Act III. Sc. 6. 

Yet so noble are all the impulses of her being, so sweet and win- 
ning is she by force of unswerving love and truth, that her per- 
sonal loveliness grows dim by the side of the diviner beauty of her 
nature. 

A pattern of ladyhood and true nobility, she embodies "the 
fair and fit " — or in the language of the play, — 

" The temple of virtue is she ; yea, and she herself." 

Act v. sc. ;>. 

It is apparent that Imogen's life is one series oi' trials, viz.. 
the anger of her father, the machinations of the Queen, th>e ban- 
ishment of her husband, the suit of Cloten, the villainy oi' [aehimo, 
the orders of Posthumus that she be slain, the hardships o( her 



28 CYMBELIN T £. 

wanderings ; all these and others are calculated to test her truth, 
love, courage, and constancy, yet all serve to prove her incompar- 
able worth. She escapes because her judgment is never deceived, 
with but one exception — that of a false induction which will be 
noticed further on. 

As in Imogen high birth is fitly matched with exalted worth, 
so, on the other hand, in Cloten is found the incongruous union of 
lofty rank and a vile nature. Malevolent, sordid, discourteous, 
brutal, vindictive, he is a type of baseness, the antithesis of a 
gentleman. He represents the un~fit and the ^n-fair. Without 
kindness of nature, he is equally devoid of judgment and is a 
bundle of incongruities, being at once a fop and a ruffian, a villain 
and a fool. His malevolence is indicated in his first exclamation, 
" Have I hurt him ? " " Would there had been some hurt done ! " 
an allusion to his base and unprovoked assault upon the exiled 
Posthumus. He is throughout antipathetic and excites antipathy 
in others. He seems subject to a chronic anger ; through violence 
of temper, he foams at mouth and has " snatches in his voice and 
bursts of speaking." 1 If he is ever merry, it is in view of some 
gratification of his malice. He can learn nothing from experience. 
An occasional gleam of sense shoots athwart the fog of his mind 
and at times he affects method in his plans ; but in general, he 
drifts without rudder or guidance. His motives are always bad 
or foolish. "Having no apprehension of roaring terrors for 
defect of judgment" he undertakes the absurdest projects. He 
is utterly unable to proportion means to ends. He will conquer 
Caesar with a grip of his hand. He is "the irregulous devil, 
Cloten." 

Upon his station he sets the highest value without the slightest 
appreciation of its dignity. His nobility consists, not in noble 
conduct, but in belonging to a certain class or moving in a certain 
set. " Is it fit that I went to look upon him ? Is there no dero- 
gation in it ? " he asks with regard to the newly-arrived Iachimo. 

1 The portrait which Suetonius gives of the emperor Claudius bears in some re- 
spects a strong resemblance to that of Cloten, — as in his fine person but revolting 
face, his cruel nature, his love of gambling, but especially in the peculiarities men- 
tioned in the text, that is, foaming at the mouth and snatches in his voice, etc : — 

"Nam etprolixo nee exili corpore erat . . . risus indecens ; ira turpior, spumante 
rictu . . . praeterea lingua titubantia . . . aleam studiosissimelusit . . . scevum natures 
fuisse. " etc. 

Could the name Cloten have been suggested by that of Claudius ? 



CYMBELINE. 29 

That he is " son to the Queen " is the uppermost thought in his 
mind. Yet, after all, he wishes he was " not so noble as he is " 
in order that he may fight with every " jack-slave " he chooses to 
offend. His conception of a gentleman is to insult his inferiors, 
wear rich clothes, and be as profane as he pleases. With no sense 
of fitness, his self-esteem is excessive and shows that he has no 
knowledge either of others or himself. A suitor for Imogen's love 
he thus estimates himself in comparison with Posthumus. 

" I dare speak it to myself (for it is not vain-glory for a man 
and his glass to confer in his own chamber), I mean, the lines 
of my body are as well drawn as his, no less young, more strong, 
not beneath him in fortunes, beyond him in the advantage of the 
time, above him in birth, alike conversant in general services, and 
more remarkable in single oppositions : yet this imperceiverant 
thing loves him in my despite." 

It does not occur to Cloten that love can depend at all on moral 
qualities. Imogen's preference for his rival — which he attributes 
to her want of judgment — excites his hate. 

" Disdaining me and throwing favors on 
The low Posthumus, slanders so her judgment 
That what 's else rare is chok'd ; and in that point 
I will conclude to hate her, nay, indeed, 
To be reveng'd upon her." 

Act. III. Sc. 5. 

His reviling of Posthumus on the score of his low estate draws 
from Imogen an expression of indignant scorn, the sting of which 
lies in the judgment she passes upon the comparative worth and 
consequent rank of the two men. 

"Profane fellow ! 
Wert thou the son of Jupiter, and no more 
But what thou art besides, thou wert too base 
To be his groom : thou wert dignified enough, 
Even to the point of envy, if 't were made 
Comparative for your virtues, to be styled 
The under-hangman of his kingdom, and hated 
For being preferr'd so well. 

Act. II. Sc. 3. 

Learning that Imogen has fled to meet her husband, Cloten 
follows her with the intent of slaying Posthumus, and, after the 
most revolting atrocities, to " knock " her and Wk foot " her home 
to her father. He sets out for Milford, finds the cave of Belarius, 



30 CYMBELINE. 

encounters Guiderius, whom he seeks to terrify by announcing: 
himself as " son to the Queen ; " but here, in the depths of the 
forest, when the false gentleman and the true one are brought face 
to face, nothing but genuine manhood will avail ; and Cloten is 
quickly dispatched with his own sword. Guiderius' estimate is 
pertinent. 

" This Cloten was a fool, an empty purse ; 
There was no money in HP 

In all matters in which Cloten is tested, he proves himself a 
fool ; he has no sense of the proportion between effect and cause, 
or between consequence and premise ; in short, he has no judgment. 

Another shadow which lends effect to the brightness of Imogen 
is the character of the Queen. She impersonates the spirit of 
social ambition, the love of rank, and the dark dissimulation of 
court intrigue. Her craft is in contrast with Imogen's truth. 
Nothing has value for the Queen but Place. She wheedles her- 
self into the affections of the king, but 

" Marries his royalty, is wife to his place, 
Abhors his person P 

The Queen is a profound judge of character ; her approaches 
to Pisanio with a view of corrupting his fidelity are a master- 
piece of dissimulation, and her instructions to Cloten as to the 
mode of wooing Imogen prove her an adept in the arts of the 
courtier. 

Smooth and insinuating, she hides under flattering words the 
deadliest malice. She overflows with affected sympathy and false 
promises of service and preferment. She is inquisitive, moreover, 
in matters of natural science, and experiments with drugs that 
she may learn their virtues and effects. Her duplicity is painted 
by a most felicitous touch, which represents her as gathering 
flowers, " violets, cowslips, and primroses," for the purpose of dis- 
tilling poisons from them. In her employ is Cornelius, a physi- 
cian, from whom she takes lessons in chemical knowledge. She 
studies poisons, she alleges, that she may discover antidotes and 
thus speaks of her scientific acquirements and tastes. 

" Queen. Have I not been 

Thy pupil long ? Hast thou not learn'd me how 
To make perfumes ? distil ? preserve ? yea, so 
That our great king himself doth woo me oft 
For my confections ? Having thus far proceeded 



CYMBELINE. • 31 

(Unless thou think'st me devilish) is 't not meet 
That I did amplify my judgment in 
Other conclusions ? x I will try the forces 
Of these thy compounds on such creatures as 
We count not worth the hanging (but none human) 
To try the vigor of them, and apply 
Allayments to their act j and by them gather 
Their several virtues and effects" 

Act. I. Sc. 6. 

The Queen's plan of marrying Cloten to Imogen is baffled by 
the flight of the latter. Adopting, therefore, another course and 
turning her experiments in chemistry to account, she prepares for 
the king — 

" A mortal mineral, which, being took, 
Should by the minute feed on life and ling'ring 
By inches waste him. In which time she purpos'd 
By watching, weeping, tendance, kissing, to 
Overcome him with her show : yea, in time 
(When she had fitted him with her craft) to work 
Her son into the adoption of the crown." 

Act. Y. Sc. 5. 

Still she is overruled by the consequences of her own acts. 
Imogen's flight causes the sudden and secret disappearance of 
Cloten, who is determined to pursue the princess " even to Au- 
gustus' throne." His mysterious and prolonged absence throws 
the Queen into a fever. Her disappointed craft and ambition 
left without an object, overthrow her judgment and drive her 
from her closeness and dissimulation. She confesses her crimes ; 
and so " she ended 

" With horror, madly dying, like her life, 
Which, being cruel to the world, concluded 
Most cruel to herself." 

Act. V. Sc. 5. 

The characters of Posthumus and Iachimo bring out by force of 
contrast the two opposite errors of credulity and skepticism^ into 
which the judgment is led, when unguided by experience. The 
first, through inexperience of the world, believes men to be more 
true than they actually are; the second through vicious associa- 
tions has so little experience of virtue that he denies its existence 
altogether. These opposite errors arc put in the strongest lighl 
by the wager respecting Imogen. All wagers grew out oi a dif- 
1 Conclusions, i. e. experiments. 



32 . CYMBELINE. 



k«ii 



ference of judgment on some point, which the parties agree shall 
be determined by a practical test. Posthumus' knowledge of Imo- 
gen's character renders him confident that Iachimo will sustain a 
repulse, while on the other hand, Iachimo's experience as a liber- 
tine leads him to think the attempt an easy task. In this he 
greatly misjudges, but his craft enables him by bold falsehoods 
and fraudulent proofs to impose a belief of his success on Posthu- 
mus, who, utterly unversed in the deceptions of the world, allows 
his feelings to be played upon and yields up his better judgment 
with easy credulity. An astute philosopher says : " It is acquired 
wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very 
seldom teach it enough. The wisest and most cautious of us all 
frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards 
ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believ- 
ing»\ 

Bacon, in treating of the duties arising out of man's relation to 
place, says in that fine scholastic style which he adopted as ap- 
propriate to his subject, when writing on The Advancement of 
Learning : " There belongeth further to the handling of this 
part touching the duties of professions and vocations, a relative 
or opposite touching the frauds, cautels, impostures, and vices of 
every profession. For it is not possible to join serpentine wis- 
dom with the columbine innocence, except one knows all the con- 
ditions of the serpent, his baseness and going upon his belly, his 
volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting and the rest, for with- 
out this, virtue lies open and unfenced." 

And, again, he says : " The sinews of wisdom are slowness of 
belief and distrust." 

These truths are exemplified, negatively, in Posthumus. Of a 
high sense of honor, he has none of that slowness of belief which 
makes men wise in their dealings. Ignorance of the deceits of 
the world leaves him " open and unfenced " against the devilish 
cunning, " the volubility and lubricity " of the villainous Iachimo, 
who first taunts and goads him into a wager, and then hoodwinks 
his judgment by mere outward shows and " simular proofs " of 
success. 

The highest eulogy that can be passed upon Posthumus is the 
fact that Imogen, who had known him from childhood, and who 
thoroughly understood his character, chose him for a husband. 

1 Adam Smith. 



CYMBELINE. 33 

This act excites much criticism upon the soundness of her judg- 
ment, it being precisely that step in life which ought most to be 
guided by counsel and experience, but which is generally taken 
under the influence of feeling. Her father, whose pride of blood 
is terribly outraged by it, thinks it madness ; but her reply is con- 
clusive. 

" Sir, 
It is your fault that I have lov'd Posthumus : 
You bred him as my playfellow ; and he is 
A man worth any woman ; overbuys me 
Almost the sum he pays." 

And a gentleman of the Court, commenting on the match, 
says : — 

"Her own price 
Proclaims how she esteemed him and his virtue ; 
By her election may be truly read 
What kind of man he is." 

Banished by Cymbeline, Posthumus retires to Rome, where at 
the house of one Philario, he meets with certain gentlemen of 
different countries, who profess to know the world and to be 
altogether too well versed in the real value of things to have any 
special belief in the merit or worth of either man or woman. 
Their skeptical spirit is displayed in the tone, with which, before 
the entry of Posthumus, they pass judgment on his qualities and 
criticise the testimony respecting him. 

Iachimo. Believe it, sir, I have seen him in Britain : he was then of a 
crescent note ; expected to prove so worthy, as since he hath been allowed 
the name of ; but I could then have looked on him without the help of ad- 
miration, though the catalogue of his endowments had been tabled by his side 
and I to peruse him by items. 

Philario, You speak of him when he was less furnish'd than now he is 
with that which makes him both without and within. 

Frenchman. I have seen him in France : we had very many there could 
behold the sun with as firm eyes as he. 

Iach. This matter of marrying his king's daughter (wherein he must be 
weigh'd rather by her value than his own) words him, I doubt not, R great 
deal from the matter. 

French. And then his banishment — 

Iach. Ay, and the approbation of those that weep this lamentable divorce 
under her colors are wonderfully to extend him, be it but to fortify her judg- 
ment, which else an easy battery might lay Hat, for taking a beggar without 
more quality. Act I. Sc. 4. 



net n. 



34 CYMBELINE. 

Upon the entrance of Posthumus, the Frenchman claims a 
previous acquaintance with him, and reminds him of an alterca- 
tion in which Posthumus had been engaged with a French gentle- 
man respecting the comparative worth of their " country mis- 
tresses," Posthumus averring his " to he more fair, courteous, 
chaste, wise, constant, qualified and less attemptable than any the 
rarest ladies of France." He, however, reproaches himself that 
when a young traveller he " rather shunn'd to go even with what 
he heard than in his every act to be guided by others' expe- 
riences," that is, he refused to be guided by wiser men than 
himself; but at the time of speaking, he claims that "his judg- 
ment is mended." Herein he deceives himself, for his judgment 
is subject to passion and his conclusions are hasty. He is, no 
doubt, justly incensed by the imputation indirectly thrown upon 
the honor of his wife by Iachimo, who, however, " bars his offense 
therein " by declaring that " he durst attempt any lady in the 
world," but in the excitement of the moment, he is drawn by the 
cool cunning of the Italian into a wager upon Imogen's virtue. 
This is his error ; he permits his feelings to sw T ay his judgment 
and even dares Iachimo to the match. 

In the scene, too, in which Iachimo claims to have won the 
wager, the want of balance in Posthumus' mind is conspicuous. 
His excited feelings blind his judgment and he allows the inward 
moral conviction which his personal experience had given him of 
Imogen's perfect truth to be overborne by the story and oath of 
a stranger, supported only by the slight and delusive evidence of 
signs and shows. Well might Imogen exclaim when she first 
hears of the accusation against her, " I false ? Thy conscience 
witness ! " Unpracticed in the treachery of the world, he is 
wholly overmatched by the subtle Italian. With so much skill 
does Iachimo array the proof and exhibit the bracelet as conclu- 
sive of success, that Posthumus, upon his friend Philario's sug- 
gesting that the bracelet may have been lost by Imogen or stolen 
by one of her women, falls into the absurdity of believing her 
attendants too honorable to be induced by a stranger to steal the 
jewel, yet his wife too little honorable not to be induced by that 
same stranger to do infinitely worse, and present it to him as a 
token of favor. He says : — 

" She would not lose it : her attendants are 
All sworn and honorable : they induced to steal it, 
And by a stranger ! No" 



CYMBELINE. 35 

A more striking picture of passion destroying the judgment 
could hardly be painted. 

And, again, his friend Philario endeavors to check his hasty 
conclusions : — 

" Sir, be patient : 
This is not strong enough to be believed 
Of one persuaded ivell of" — 

But Posthumus will listen to no remonstrance. Wrought to mad- 
ness by the torture to which Iachimo subjects him, he tells his 
friend to talk no more, even threatens to kill Iachimo if he deny 
that he has dishonored him, and " quite beside the government of 
patience" breaks away to vent his feelings in a soliloquy, in which 
he embraces all womankind, including his own mother, in one 
sweeping indiscriminate condemnation. This soliloquy is a fine 
instance of that influence of sympathy which causes a passion, 
particularly resentment, to include within its scope all that is 
associated or supposed to be in sympathy with its main object. 

In the anguish of his mind, he orders his wife to be put to 
death. Deceived again by false signs and proofs and made to be- 
lieve that his orders have been executed, he is overwhelmed with 
remorse, which rises, upon his being assured of Imogen's inno- 
cence, into self -execration, — a terrible feeling, which is, in fact, 
our own sympathy with the hate engendered by our evil deeds. 

" Ah me, most credulous fool, 
Egregious murderer, thief, any thing 
That 's due to all the villains past, in being, 
To come ! . . . 

Spit, and throw stones, cast mire upon me, set 
The dogs o' the street to bay me : every villain 
Be call'd Posthumus Leonatus ; and 
Be villainy less than 't was ! " 

Act V. Sc. 5. 

But trial at last chastens him and makes him wise in feeling 
and judgment; and he then reveals that nobility of nature which 
justifies Imogen's choice of him as a husband. 

His faults are attributable to hastiness of judgment, arising 
from inexperience and ignorance of men. 

On the other hand, Iachimo, a cool, accompli shed man of the 
world, a heartless libertine, audacious, ounning, and fluent, lias 
through the teachings of a licentious life become utterly skeptical 



36 CYMBELINE. 






of the existence of woman's virtue. His one-sided experience has 
led him to believe that " if you buy ladies' flesh at a million a 
drachm you cannot preserve it from tainting." This skepticism is 
an error as great and misleads the judgment as grossly as the ex- 
cessive credulity instanced in Posthumus. He is of the opinion 
that Bacon expressed (though not as truth), " that love is a wild 
fowl, in which property passes with possession ; " for he says to 
Posthumus in reference to Imogen : " You may wear her in title 
yours, but you know strange fowl light on neighboring ponds." 
The scene between Iachimo and Imogen is an illustration of 
that species of sympathy by which all acting and simulation are 
practiced. In it, Iachimo shows himself master of the arts of the 
libertine. He attacks the character of Posthumus by affecting 
astonishment at his want of judgment in preferring to Imogen 
one of so little comparative worth as her supposed rival, " a tom- 
boy, " for whom he is alleged to have sold Imogen's interest and 
his own honor. By this means, he hopes to arouse the lady's 
pride, and with great address, imputes to her husband the same 
unbelief in woman's virtue, which he had himself professed at 
the time of the wager. 

" The jolly Briton, 

(Your lord, I mean) laughs from 's free lungs, cries Q ! 

Can my sides hold to think that man, — who knows 

By history, report, or his own proof 

What woman is, yea, what she cannot choose 

But must be, — will his free hours languish 

For assur'd bondage." 

Act I. Sc. 7. 

Imogen is at first deceived by the consummate acting of the 
Italian, but as soon as he hints revenge, she reads his whole 
meaning, and spurns him with the utmost contempt. After Iach- 
imo's strained and elaborate speeches, the hyperbole of which 
is symbolical of the tendency of all insincerity to exaggerate, 
and which, moreover, by extreme disproportion of the figures 
used for illustrating Posthumus' defect of judgment, falls into 
what may be called a rhetorical inverse ratio, as for instance, 

"What! 
To hide me from the radiant sun and solace 
In a dungeon by a snuff" — 

it is curious to observe how simple and perfectly balanced are the 
phrases that convey the scorn of the truthful Imogen. They take 



CYMBELINE. 37 

the form of an equation and are expressed in the directest lan- 
guage. 

" If thou wert honorable, 

Thou would'st have told this tale for virtue, not 

For such an end thou seek'st ; as base, as strange. 

Thou wrong'st a gentleman, who is as far 

From thy report as thou from honor ; and 

Solicit'st here a lady, that disdains 

Thee and the devil alike" 

Act I. Sc. 7. 

Being thus rebuffed, the wily Italian at once converts his vil- 
lainy into the means of extricating himself from the hazard he 
had incurred. He breaks forth to Imogen in eloquent praise of 
her husband and avers that his attempt was but an experiment, 
which, as a friend of Posthumus, he had made to try her fidelity. 

"Be not angry, 
Most mighty Princess, that I have adventured 
To try your taking of a false report ; which hath 
Honored with confirmation your great judgment 
In the election of a sir so rare 
Which, you know, cannot err." 

Act I. Sc. 7. 

To win the bet, Iachimo has recourse to treachery. By a bold 
stratagem, he gains access to Imogen's chamber, of which he takes 
notes that he may use them as proofs of his success. He also gets 
possession of her bracelet, which is his main proof. It is the ap- 
parent " cognizance " of her guilt. When he slips it off the arm 
of the sleeping lady, he says : — 

" Come off, come off : 
As slippery as the Gordian knot was hard ! 
? Tis mine ; and this will witness outwardly, 
As strongly as the conscience does within, 
To the madding of her lord." 

Act II. Sc. 2. 

In this he truly reads Posthumus' character. The display of 
this jewel, his own gift to Imogen, maddens Posthunms, and Iach- 
imo wins the ring which formed the stake. But it is a fatal suc- 
cess. The ring in its turn becomes to Iachimo tin* cognizance oi 
his villainy. It witnesses outwardly as strongly as his conscience 
does within to the infamous ti'eachery with which lie had belied 
an innocent lady. Hardened as is his heart by worldliness, there 
still lingers in him enough of the sentiment and sympathy of a 



38 CYMBELINE. 






gentleman to feel remorse and shame. The virtue and dignity of 
Imogen teach him the wide difference " twixt amorous and vil- 
lainous, " and he becomes penitent through an experience gained 
in his attempted villainy. His guilt unnerves his arm in battle, 
and he sinks beneath the sword of Posthumus, who, content with 
disarming his opponent, spares his life. This mercy has a rich 
reward. Had Posthumus put him to death, he would have slain 
the only witness that could fully confirm Imogen's truth. But 
Iachimo lives to be brought, a prisoner, before Cymbeline, when 
Imogen espies upon his finger the ring, and this leads to a confes- 
sion of his guilt and the full vindication of her honor. 

Pisanio and Cymbeline are both of them fitted into the piece 
in the most artistic manner. 

Pisanio's is a very beautiful character. It corresponds to that 
of Imogen. As she is " the lady," he is " the servant " — a ser- 
vant after the fashion of the antique world when love and vows 
and duty were the bond of service. A warm heart and sound 
head, an intense but respectful admiration of his mistress, and a 
canine fidelity mark a character which is fully representative of 
Man in relation to Place. 

Pisanio has a perfectly balanced judgment, and this gives him 
a clear insight into character. He reads unerringly the natures of 
all those he has to do with : his estimates of Posthumus, of Imogen, 
of the Queen, of Cloten, of Lucius, are profound and correct ; he 
even sees through the villainy of Iachimo, although he, of course, 
knows nothing and can know nothing of the particulars. His 
character is one of great practical wisdom. 

Cymbeline fills his place in the canvas with equal propriety. 
An uxorious monarch wheedled by an artful and beautiful queen is 
one of the commonest figures in History. Such is Cymbeline, 
whose character is made up of sympathy and antipathy in their 
simplest forms, — love and rage ; love for his wife and children, 
and rage at the marriage and flight of Imogen. At the close of 
the piece all his better qualities come uppermost, and as a humane 
and gracious sovereign he is the central figure of the group. But 
that which renders his character peculiarly appropriate in this 
play, which treats of Man in relation to Place, is that nearly all 
that Cymbeline says and does has reference to the exercise of the 
prerogative of his office. For instance, he receives ambassadors. 

"Mess. So like you, sir, ambassadors from Rome: 
The one is Caius Lucius. 



CYMBELINE. 39 

Cym. A worthy fellow, 

Albeit he comes on angry purpose now ; 
But that 's no fault of his ; we must receive him 
According to the honor of his sender." 

He grants safe conduct. 

"Lucius. Sir, I desire of you 

A conduct over-land to Milford-Haven. 
" Cym. My lords, you are appointed for that office ; 

The due of honor in no point omit, 

Leave not the worthy Lucius, good my lords, 

Till he have cross' d the Severn." 

He commands the army, as in the battle with the Romans. 
He maintains the laws. 

" We do say then to Caesar, 
6 Our ancestor was that Mulmutius, which 
Ordain'd our laws, whose use the sword of Csesar 
Hath too much mangled ; whose repair and franchise 
Shall by the power we hold be our good deed, 
Though Rome be therefore angry.' " 

He makes treaties. 

" Cym. My peace we will begin. And, Caius Lucius, 
Although the victor, we submit to Caesar 
And to the Roman empire ; promising 
To pay our wonted tribute. 

Publish we this peace 
To all our subjects." 

He confers rewards and punishments, as in the case of Belarius, 
Posthumus, Guiderius. 

" Woe is my heart 
That the poor soldier that so richly fought 
. . . cannot be found ! 

To my grief I am 
The heir of his reward, which I will add to you," etc. 

The exile of Posthumus and Belarius and the sentence of death 
passed on Guiderius are instances of punishment. 
He grants pardons. 

We '11 learn our freeness of a son-in-law , 
"Pardon 9 s the word to all." 

He bestows titles and honors. 

" Bow your knees. 

Arise my knights of the battle ; I create you 



40 CYMBELINE. 

Companions to our person and will fit you 
With dignities becoming your estates." 

All these are instances of prerogative. 
The scenes among the mountains of Wales are those which give 
the highest romantic coloring to the play. A beautiful princess 
wandering in the disguise of a boy over mountains and through 
forests, and falling in by chance with her two long lost brothers, 
who had been stolen from their cradles and were now living in a 
cave as hunters ; and a sudden attachment springing up between 
them through the secret sympathy of blood ; and her apparent 
death from taking a powerful drug, and their strewing her body 
with flowers and singing a dirge and performing other obsequies 
with a tender, respectful sympathy, are incidents which of them- 
selves contain whole chapters of romance. Yet under the 
" woodnotes wild " in which these scenes are written, the domi- 
nant ideas of the play are particularly resonant. Belarius is the 
voice of experience, giving guidance to the young princes, whose 
mounting spirits are eager for an opportunity to gain distinction, 
while their love for Fidele and their grief at his death are spe- 
cially marked as forms of sympathy. 

Belarius is one to whom a ripe experience has taught the hol- 
lowness of the world, but has left untouched his faith in virtue* 
His mind is rich in aphorisms and habitually draws from natural 
objects precepts of moral wisdom. 

" Up to yon hill. 

Your legs are young ; I '11 tread these flats. Consider 

When you above perceive me like a crow, 

That it is place that lessens and sets off: 

And you may then revolve what tales I 've told yon 

Of courts, of princes, of the tricks of war : 

That service is not service, so being done, 

But being so allowed : to apprehend thus 

Draws us a profit from all things we see" 

Though with the caution of age he checks the ardor of the 
young princes, their valor excites his admiration, and in acceding 
to their request to join in the battle he shows the fire of the old 
soldier. 

" Have with you, boys : 
If in your country wars you chance to die, 
That is my bed too, lads, and there I '11 lie. 

Lead, lead. The time seems long : their blood thinks scorn, [Aside. 
Till it fly out and show them princes born." 



CYMBELINE. 41 

The two princes, who think themselves neither better nor worse 
than mountaineers and outlaws, are fine specimens of " God's gen- 
tlemen." They are ideals of those manly virtues, truth, valor, 
and courtesy, that stamp a natural aristocracy. Their humble 
standing sets off the loftiness of their natures. They illustrate 
the theory of blood, birth, and transmissible qualities. 
" Though train'd up thus meanly 
I' the cave wherein they bow, their thoughts do hit 
The roofs of palaces." 

All aglow with courage, they chafe against the obscurity of 
their lives. The stories told them of his warlike deeds by the old 
soldier whom they deem their father prompt irrepressible desires 
of a similar experience. They too wish to have tales to tell when 
they are old. But Belarius cautions them against the emptiness 
of ambition and the ingratitude of the world. They reply : — 

" Guid. Out of your proof 'you speak. We poor unfledg'd 
Have never wing'd from view o' the nest ; nor know not 
What air 's from home. Haply this life is best 
If quiet life be best." 

Imogen, who disregards all factitious distinctions, and prizes 
only moral worth, clearly reads their nobility of nature. 

" Great men 
That had a court no bigger than this cave, 
That did attend themselves, and had the virtue 
Which their own conscience seal'd them — 
Could not out-peer these twain" 

Act III. Sc. 6. 
The sense of fitness, so conspicuous in the conduct of Imogen, 
is apparent also in her brothers. It is thus expressed by Gui- 
derius : — 

" Guid. Where 's my brother ? 

Bel. My ingenious instrument ! [Solemn music. 

Hark, Polydore, it sounds : but what occasion 
Hath Cadwal now to give it motion ? Hark ! 
Guid. Is he at home ? 

Bel. He went hence even now. 

Guid. What does he mean ? since death of our dear'st mother 
It did not speak before. All solemn things 
Should answer solemn accidents. The matter t 
Triumphs for nothing and lamenting togs 
Is jollity for apes and grief f or bogs. 
Is Cadvjal mad 1 " 

AH IV. Sc. 2. 



42 CYMBELIXE. 

From the foregoing analysis (notwithstanding its omissions) it 
is apparent that the subject of Cymheline, stated summarily, is 
Man in relation to Place, which in the moral scale depends upon 
his comparative worth, and that a knowledge ofthis is gained by 
actual proof or trial, and by interpreting his looks, words, and 
actions as the outward signs of his inward nature and qualities. 
Such an interpretation of human nature by actual trial is ob- 
viously analogous with Bacon's method, called by him 4i The 
Interpretation of Xature." by experience ; the philosopher only 
extending to physical nature at large the process which the dra- 
matist necessarily confines to man. 

The well-known Aphorism with which the Novum Organum 
opens, runs as follows : — 

"Man. being the servant and intrepreter of nature Qnaturce 
minister et interpret) can do and understand so much, and so 
much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course 
of nature ; beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do 
anything." 

" He is naturae, interpres" says Mr. Ellis in his Preface to 
the Xovum Organum, "because in every object that is presented 
to him there are two things to be considered, or rather two asp>ects 
of the same thing, one, the phenomenon which nature presents to 
the senses, the other, the inward mechanism and action, of which 
the phenomenon in question is not only the result, but also the 
outward sign. To pass therefore from the phenomenon to its 
hidden cause is to interpret the signs which enable us to become 
acquainted, with the operation of nature" 

A pointed instance of this is Imogen's attempt to interpret the 
looks of Pisanio and pass from them to their hidden causes in his 
mind and feelings : — 

" Pisanio ! Mail ! 

Where 's Posthumus ? What is in thy mind 

That makes thee stare thus ? Wherefore breaks that sigh 

From the inward of thee ? One, but painted thus, 

Would be interpreted a thing perplex' d 

Beyond self-explication. Put thyself 

Into a havior of less fear, ere wildness 

Vanquish my staider senses. What 's the matter ? 

Why tender'st thou that paper to me, with 

A look untender f If it be summer news 

Smile to 't before ; if winterly, thou need'st 

But keep that countenance still." 

Act III. Sc. 4. 



CYMBELINE. 43 

The analogy, not to say identity, between the interpretation of 
physical nature and human nature is evident. 

But this resemblance is only general, and will not of itself 
warrant the supposition that there is any connection between 
the play and such philosophy. For Bacon himself tells us that 
his scientific induction is not absolutely under all circumstances 
necessary. His words are : " If men had at their command 
a proper history of nature and experience, they might, by the 
proper and genuine exertion of their minds, fall into our way of 
intrepretation without the aid of any art" Nov. Org. Book I. 
Aph. 130. 

It can very well be, then, that a play might be written repre- 
senting experience as the sure foundation of knowledge and the 
true guide of life without the dramatist's ever having heard of 
Bacon or his system. It must, therefore, be inquired what there 
was special and technical in Bacon's method, that is, what was 
the particular form of the history he required, and what was the 
particular use he made of it, and what the particular Art of In- 
duction he invented, and see whether there is any correspondence 
between the play and such specialties before a conclusion can be 
warranted that the play was intended or even that it can be 
taken to illustrate the Baconian doctrine. 

Inductive Philosophy being founded solely on experience, the 
first and indispensable requisite in Bacon's system is a collec- 
tion of " the phenomena of nature, that is to say, experience of 
every hind and such a natural history as can form a foundation 
for an edifice of philosophy." This history, however, is not one 
giving a description of animals, plants, and varieties of species for 
the instruction or pleasure to be derived from the narrative, but 
is a compilation and collection of experiments and phenomena of 
all kinds and drawn from all quarters, to be used as matter for 
Induction. It required " labor and search and world-wide pei am- 
bulation " and was wholly unlike any ordinary natural history : 
Bacon, however, made known nothing of his views on this subject 
until long after the production of Cymbeline, 

In the Advancement (a. d. 1605) in which he classifies the 
sciences, he, of course, speaks of History which he divides into 
natural and civil. "In natural history, we recount the events 
and doings of nature ; in civil, of men." 

Of natural history, he thus discourses : — 



44 CYMBELINE. 



se, ot 



"History of nature is of three sorts, of nature in course, 
nature erring or varying, and of nature altered or wrought, that 
is, history of creatures, history of marvel*, and history of arts. 
The first of these, no doubt, is extant, and that in good perfec- 
tion : the two latter are handled so weakly and miprofitably as I 
am moved to note (hem as deficient For, I find no sufficient or 
competent collection of the works of nature, which have a digres- 
sion and deflexion from the Ordinary course of generations, pro- 
ductions, and /notions, whether they be singularities of place and 
region or the strange events of time and chance or the effects of 
yet unknown properties or the instances of exceptions to general 
hinds:' 

u - Neither am I of opinion in this history of marvels, that su- 
perstitious narrations of sorceries, witchcraft, charm S, dreams, 
divinations, and the like, where there is an assurance and clear 
evidence oi' the fact, be altogether excluded." 

It will bo observed that in this passage no mention is made of 
natural history as a basis of philosophy, nor as furnishing matter 
for induction, nor are any special titles given to the subdivisions 
of history other than ww nature in coui'se, nature erring, and 
nature ottered or wrought^ or history of creatures, of marvels, 
and of arts" The Advancement was published in 1605, and it 
was the only work published during Shakespeare's lifetime from 
which he could have learned Bacon's views on this subject. 
Cymbeline in the form we now have it, was certainly written 
by or before 1610, and although at or about the period of its 
production Bacon was writing philosophical tracts in Latin, in 
which he treats largely of Natural History as a foundation of 
philosophy, none oi' them saw the light until long after Shake- 
speare's death. 

In the year 1620 (four years after Shakespeare's death) Bacon 
published his Novum Organum, in which lie insists with the 
greatest weight and emphasis upon the necessity of founding 
philosophy upon History, that is, experience (Book L Aph. 98) ; 
and to the first edition of that book, he appended a short Latin 
tract, o( which the title made English is kk Preparative for a 
\oturid and Experimental History, or a Description of a 
and ami Experimental History such as may serve for the 

foundation of a true pliilosoplnj" 
This tract consists oi' ten aphorisms in which he lays down 



CYMBELINE. 45 

" the plan and rule " to be observed in compiling such a history, 
and in the first of these he sets forth the different divisions into 
which Natural History falls, as follows : — 

" Natural History is threefold, for it treats either of the 
liberty of Nature, or of its errors or wanderings, or of its chains." 

[This is virtually the same division he has previously made in 
the Advancement, but in The Preparative, etc., he adds : — ] 

" So that it may be not improperly divided into the history of 
Generations, of Prwter-generations and of Arts, the latter of 
which we are wont to call History Mechanical or Experimental" 

The plan of Bacon's Natural History and its peculiar classifi- 
cation and nomenclature, as well as its use in furnishing materials 
for induction, were, of course, entirely original with him ; indeed, 
he repeatedly tells us and even complains (Nov. Org. Book I. 
Aph. 98) that nothing of the kind had been attempted ; yet it is 
a singular fact that in Cymbeline (which, representing life as 
revealed in our primary instincts, is an image of history in its ele- 
ments, and so far as it goes, is a Natural History of, Sympathy 
and Antipathy in Man) the topics of the play — and by topics 
is heVe meant those general heads under which the different sub- 
jects of the dialogue can be classified — coincide with the main 
heads and divisions of Bacon's plan of a History (as a foundation 
for philosophy), applying and confining to man or human nature 
what Bacon extends to physical nature at large. 

And, first, with respect to Generation, it may be remarked that 
the whole play, while in its circumstances and situations in the 
highest degree legendary and improbable, is made up of a series 
of instances of the more marked forms of sympathy and antipathy, 
woven with amazing skill into one connected tissue, the most of 
which are feelings and passions which lie in the ordinary and 
well-beaten paths of life. They are instances of " nature in 
course." To say nothing of the domestic affections, whioh hold 
a prominent place in the play, such common modifications o( love 
and hate as admiration, scorn, gratitude, anger, pity, malevolence, 
love of country, treason, are prevalent throughout the play, and 
are phenomena which would necessarily enter into a history oi 
sympathy and antipathy in Man. 

lint Generation taken in its direct and usual sense with refer- 
ence to man is a leading theme of the piece ; lor the play repre- 
sents man in relation to place or rank, and contrasts QODllltj bj 



~~J 



46 CYMBELIXE. 

birth with nobility of character : and the notions of birth, blood, 
stock, family, breeding, descent, and other similar conceptions 
pervade the play. The chief incidents of the play spring out 
of feelings connected with these notions. It is the marriage of 
Imogen, of the blood royal, to Posthuinus, who is of inferior 
stock, that arouses the king's pride of blood, and leads to the 
banishment of Posthuinus. This measure is also instigated by the 
Queen, who hopes by marrying her son to Imogen, the heiress of 
the crown, to aggrandize her family ; the wager of Iachimo and 
Posthuinus has direct reference to the same topic, and the soliloquy 
of Posthuinus (Act III. Sc. 5) is particularly in point. In the 
opening scene, we have a narrative of the circumstances attending 
the birth of the hero of the piece and of his parentage and breed- 
ing, together with the story of the abduction from their nursery of 
the two children of the king. " one of them at three years old, in 
the swathing-clothes the other." The very name of the hero, or 
rather both his names, " Posthumus n and " Leonatus," have refer- 
ence to his birth. The relation of husband and wife, of parent 
and child, are the prominent ones of the piece, and the trans- 
mission of blood and of the instincts that depend upon it are re- 
peatedly mentioned and notably dwelt upon. Belarius restores 
the two princes to the king as " the issue of his loins and blood of 
his begetting," and the introduction of the two ;; lads " among 
the characters tends to keep the same notion before the mind. 
The apparition to Posthumus of his father, mother, and brothers, 
and their history of his birth, descent, breeding, and marriage, 
are obviously connected with the same topic. He says : — 

" O sleep, thou hast been a grandsire and begot 
A father to me. 

The notion of generation appears, moreover, conspicuously in 
the metaphors and diction. Thus Guiderius expresses his scorn 
of Cloten : — 

" Clo. Know'st me not by my clothes ? 
Quid. No, nor thy tailor, rascal ; 
Who is thy grandfather : he made those clothes 
Which, as it seems, make thee.'' 

Cynibeline. in his joy at the restoration of his children, exclaims : 

" Oh what am I, 
A mother to the birth of thee ! ne'er mother 
Rejoiced deliverance more." 






CYMBELINE. 47 

Imogen expresses her desire to meet her husband : — 

" Ne'er longed my mother so 
To see me first as I do now." 

The introduction of the notion at times renders the metaphor 
forced and harsh. 

Some jay of Italy, whose mother was her painting. 

The most cursory perusal of the play will show that generation 
is in various forms a main topic of the piece. The instances, 
however, of generation or nature in course belong more properly 
to the Natural History of Man on his physical side, while the 
moral instances are those common forms of sympathy and an- 
tipathy, of love and resentment, which, as has been mentioned, 
make up the habitual current of human feeling. But must not 
any faithful portrayal of life exhibit similar examples? Neces- 
sarily so, to a greater or less extent ; but the peculiarity of Cym- 
heline is that the instances it presents of nature in course are but 
one class or portion of the numerous mental phenomena the play 
contains, there being in it also a large number of extraordinary 
examples of occult sympathies and other similar matters, form- 
ing a class that corresponds with the second division made by 
Bacon of Natural History and styled by him prozter-generations 
or nature erring or varying. 

Under this second head are comprised such marvels as " the 
strange events of time and chance, the effect of hidden properties, 
instances of exceptions to general kinds ; " also monadica or 
things of which there is but one ; also " dreams and divinations" 
and by Aphorism III. of The Preparative, etc., we find that this 
class embraces such marvels as were referred by writers on Nat- 
ural magic to sympathy and antipathy. In the Novum Organ um 
(Book II. Aph. 31) Bacon mentions also superstition, charms 
and magic as worthy of investigation, together with such instances 
as the sympathy of distant objects, the transmission of impres- 
sions, and the like. 

This region of the marvelous is precisely that in which Cym- 
beline is cast; the poet assuming as true, for the purposes of his 
legendary drama, the popular beliefs and superstitions which the 
philosopher would probably reject as fabulous. 

The nature, however, of the marvels that Bacon would admit 
into his history can be best known from his Sylva Sylvarum, 



48 CYMBELINE. 

a Natural History in ten centuries. 1 This work was found 
among Bacon's papers after his death and published in the year 
1627, by Dr. Kawley, his chaplain. Shakespeare, of course, 
could never have seen it. It contains many instances of sympathy 
and antipathy, with which are identical some of those the dra- 
matist has introduced into Cyinbeline, whilst others that he has 
made use of are so similar as clearly to belong to the same class. 

Thus in Century X. Experiment 986, Bacon says : " I would 
have it enquired whether there be any secret passage of sympathy 
between persons of near blood, as parent,' child, brother, sister, 
husband, and wife, etc." 

In the piece, a marked use is made of this sort of sympathy, in 
the love that springs up at first meeting between Imogen, dis- 
guised as a page, and her two brothers, although their relationship 
is wholly unknown to them. 

" Guiderius. Were you a woman, youth, 

I should woo hard but be your groom. In honesty 
I bid for you as I do buy. 

Arviragm. I '11 make 't my comfort 

He is a man : I '11 love him as my brother. " 

Act III. Sc. 6. 

Another similar instance is the sudden favor and affection with 
which Cymbeline regards his daughter, who is unrecognized by 
him under the disguise she then wears ; although this might, 
perhaps, be cited as an instance of those cases mentioned in Ex. 
939 of Century X. which is as follows : — 

" It is mentioned in some stories that where children have 
been exposed or taken away young from their parents and that 
afterward they have appeared to their parents' presence, the par- 
ents, though they have not known them, have felt a secret joy or 
other alteration thereupon." 

So Cymbeline says to Imogen disguised as Fidele : — 

" I have surely seen him. 
His favor is familiar to me. 
Boy, thou hast look'd thyself into my grace 
And art mine own. 

What would'st thou, boy ? 
I love thee more and more." 

Act V. Sc. 5. 

1 This word is used in the same sense in fche play : " And on it said a century of 
prayers." 



CYMBELINE. 49 

In a passage (Cent. X. Ex. 987) treating of sympathy between 
distant objects, Bacon suggests as follows : — 

" Some trial would be made whether pact or agreement do any- 
thing ; as if two friends should agree that such a day or every 
week they being in far distant places should pray one for another, 
or should put on a ring or tablet one for another, whether, if one 
of them should break their vow and promise, the other should 
have any feeling of it in absence." 

Such a pact or agreement " to pray for one another," is alluded 
to by Imogen when grieving over the departure of Posthumus. 

" Ere I could tell him 
How I would think on him at certain hours 
Such thoughts and such . . . 

or have charged him 
On the sixth hour of morn, at noon, at midnight, 
To encounter me with orisons, for then 
/ am in heaven for him." 

Act I. Sc. 4. 

With regard to the exchange of love-tokens, Bacon says 
further : — 

" It is received that it helpeth to continue lone if one wear a 
ring or a bracelet of the hair of the party beloved " Century X. 
Ex. 996. 

Imogen and Posthumus exchange a ring and a bracelet as love- 
tokens and pledges of fidelity. 

" Imo. This diamond was my mother's : take it, heart, 
But keep it till you woo another wife 
When Imogen is dead. . . 

Post. For my sake, wear this : 

It is a manacle of love ; I '11 place it 
Upon this fairest prisoner." 

Act I. Sc. 2. 

The secret properties of blood are exemplified in the aspira- 
tions of the sons of the king, of whom, brought up as mountain- 
eers, it is said that 

" Though train'd up thus meanly 
I' the cave wherein they bow, their thoughts do hit 
The roofs of palaces and nature prompts them 
in simple, and low things, to prince it much 
Beyond the trick of others. 

A.cf [II. So, 3. 



50 CYMBELINE. 

Astrological predictions of the fortunes of men are mentioned. 

" O learn'd indeed were that astronomer 
That knew the stars as / his characters : 
He 'd lay the future open." 

Act III. Sc. 2. 

So, also, the influence of the stars over the bloods or disposi- 
tions of men. 

"Our bloods 
No more obey the heavens, than our courtiers 
Still seem as does the king. 

Act I. Sc. 1. 

A beautiful popular superstition is introduced into the lament 
of Arviragus over the dead Fidele, which closes with an allusion 
to the sympathy of the red-breast that covers with leaves the 
bodies of unburied men. 

" The ruddock would 
With charitable bill . . . bring thee all this, 
Yea, and furr'd moss besides, where flowers are none, 
To winter-ground thy corse" 

Act IV. Sc. 2. 

Of a like character is the mention made by Guiderius of the 
" female fairies " that haunt and protect the graves of those that 
die innocent. 

" With female fairies will his tomb be haunted 
And worms will not come to thee." 

Act IV. Sc. 2. 

Under this head maybe placed also the superstitious belief that 
the souls of men slain in battle are appeased by the slaughter of 
captive enemies. 

" The tribute 
The Britons have raz'd out, though with the loss 
Of many a bold one ; whose kinsmen have made suit 
That their good souls may be appeas'd with slaughter 
Of you their captives." 

Act V. Sc. 5. 

Similar to this is the belief in charms used for protection. 

"I, in my ovm woe charmed, 
Could not find death where I did hear him groan. 

Act V. Sc. 3. 

The superstitious tendency to attribute what is unknown or un- 



.i- 



CYMBELINE. 51 

accountable to supernatural causes is marked in the observation 
of the soldiers. 

" Great Jupiter be prais'd ! Lucius is taken : 
'T is thought the old man and his sons were angels" 

Act V. Sc. 3. 

In Century X. Ex. 945, Bacon says : " Fear and shame are 
likewise infections, for we see that the starting of one will make 
another start." 

And in Ex. 1000, the effect of sympathy upon multitudes of 
men is noticed. 

Of these there is an admirable illustration in panic fear — suc- 
ceeded by an infectious courage — so elaborately described in the 
narration of the battle, Act V. Sc. 3. 

" The king himself 
Of his wings destitute, the army broken, 
And out the backs of Britons seen, all flying 
Through a straight lane ; the enemy full-hearted, 
Lolling the tongue with slaughtering, having work 
More plentiful than tools to do 't, struck down 
Some mortally, some slightly touched, some falling 
Merely through fear, etc." 

" These three 
. . . with this word, * stand, stand,' 
Accommodated by the place, more charming 
With their own nobleness (which could have turned 
A distaff to a lance) gilded pale looks, 
Part shame, part spirit renew 1 d ; that some turned coward 
But by example (O a sin in war, 
Damn'd in the first beginners), 'gan to look 
The way that they did and to grin like lions 
On the pikes o' the hunters, etc." 

" And now our cowards 
(Like fragments in hard voyages) became 
The life o y the need. . . . 

Heavens, how they wound ! 
Ten, chased by one, 
Are now each one the slaughter-man of twenty ; 
Those that would die or ere resist are grown 
The mortal bugs 1 o' the field." 

Act V. So. 3. 

There*are in the play also allusions to the glances of the basi- 
lisk and of the evil eye (Ex. 944), both of which are mentioned, 
and the last apparently believed, by Bacon. 

1 Bugs, terrors. 



52 CYMBELINE. 






A beautiful instance of poetic sympathy or that power by 
which the poet causes all nature to sympathize with his passion, 
occurs in Iachimo's description of the sleeping Imogen. The 
passage illustrates admiration as a form of sympathy, but with 
true Shakespearian subtilty Iachimo is made to express his ad- 
miration by describing the taper as sympathizing in the feeling. 

" The flame of the taper 
Bows toward her and would underpeep her lids 
To see the enclosed lights, now canopied 
Under these windows, white and azure, lac'd 
With blue of heaven's own tint." 

Act II. Sc. 2. 

Of antipathies, there are some striking instances. The Queen 
has an antipathy both to the king and to Imogen ; the one she 
" abhors" the other is " as a scorpion in her sight." 

In Sylva Sylvarum, Cent. X. Ex. 984, Bacon observes, " Gener- 
ally that which is dead or corrupted hath an antipathy with the 
same thing when it is alive and when it is sound, as a carcass of 
a man is most infectious and odious to man." 

This is introduced into the play, where Imogen is pillowed 
upon the dead body of Cloten. 

" How! a page ! 
Or dead or sleeping on him ? but dead rather ; 
For nature doth abhor to make his couch 
With the defunct, or sleep upon the dead. 

Act IV. Sc. 2. 

Another instance of antipathy is mentioned by Bacon (Cent 
V. Ex. 480), when treating of the ancient and received tradition 
touching the sympathy and antipathy of plants, he says, " Some 
will thrive best growing near to others, which they impute to 
sympathy, and some worse, which they impute to antipathy," the 
explanation of which he gives as follows : — 

" Whenever a plant draweth such a particular juice out of the 
earth as it qualifieth the earth so as that juice which remaineth is 
fit for the other plant, then the neighborhood doeth good," etc. 
Then alluding to the old tradition (probably taken by him from 
Porta' s " Natural Magic," or, it may be, from Varro) of the 
enmity between the colewort and the vine, he says : — m 

" So the colewort is not an enemy (though that was anciently 
received) to the vine only, but it is an enemy to any other plant, 
because it draweth the fattest juice of the earth." 



CYMBELINE. 53 

And he proposes the following experiment : " Take a service- 
tree or an elder-tree, which we know have fruits of a harsh and 

rinding juice and set them near a vine and see whether the 

jrapes will not be the sweeter." 

Now in the play a highly figurative passage is framed on this 
antipathy of one plant to another, though in keeping with the 
fabulous character of his dramatic legend, the poet assumes such 
antipathy as a fact, yet singularly enough adopts for his illus- 
tration not the unpoetical colewort as given by Porta or Varro, 
from whom he might possibly have taken this instance, but the 
elder, which is selected by Bacon for his experiment. 

" Guid. I do note 

That Grief and Patience rooted in him both 
Do mingle their spurs together. 
Arvir. Grow, Patience, 

And let the stinking elder, Grief, untwine 
His perishing root, with the increasing vine." 

Act IV. Sc. 2. 

Perishing is obviously taken here in an active sense and signifies 
" causing to perish," not an infrequent use of the word. 

Under Prceter -generation Bacon also classes dreams and 
divinations. In the play there is a case directly in point in the 
dream of the soothsayer portending success to the Roman host ; 
and observe that Bacon in the De Augmentis (Book III. 
ch. 4) lays down the doctrine that the state of the mind pro- 
ductive of divination is " procured or promoted by abstinence 
and such things as withdraw the mind from exercising the func- 
tions of the body," that is " by fasting and prayer" 

" Lucius. Now, sir, 

What have you dream? d of late, of this ivar's purpose f 
Sooth. Last night the very gods show'd me a vision 
(I fast and pray'd for their intelligence) thus — 
I saw Jove's bird, the Roman eagle, wing'd 
From the spongy South to this part of the West, 
Then vanish'd in the sunbeams ; which portends 
(Unless my sins abuse my divination) 
Success to the Roman host." 

Ad IV. So. 2. 

A like instance is the vision of Posthumus. Tin's is supposed 
by some critics to bean interpolation, but it is woven into the 
plot and catastrophe and is perfectly in keeping with the whole 
spirit and philosophy of the play. 



54 CYMBELIXE. 

Among other things which Bacon would have placed in his 
Natural History as instances of prceter-generations of nature, are 
what he calls monadica or things singular in their kind, as the 
sun and moon among stars ; the magnet among stones ; quick- 
silver among metals, etc. (Nov. Org. Book II. Aph. 2i 

These also appear in the play applied to human nature, as in 
the description of Posthumus. 

u He is a creature such 
As. to seek through the regions of the eari 
For one failing 

In him that should compare. I do not thiuk 
S o _ fa ir a n o u t w a rd an d s ?/ c ' I '< in 

Endows a man ou f he.'' 

Act I. Sc. 1. 

Imogen also belongs to this class of " singular instances." 

" All of her. that is out of door, most rich ! 
If she i '->, a mind so rare 

She is alone the Arabian bird : and I 
Have lost the wager." 

Act I. Sc. 7. 

The foregoing instances of strange and unusual sympathies 
and antipathies, together with those of charms, dreams, divina- 
tions, and the like, leave no doubt that the peculiar class of 
phenomena called by Bacon " prmter-generafiion" in his ;i plan 
and rule " for a Natural History is amply introduced into the 
piece, and that many of them, moreover, are operative as mo- 
tives that decide the action of the characters. 

And indeed the play itself, on account of the marvels of its 
plot and its notable digressions from ordinary dramatic rule, may 
be considered a dramatic prcBtengenercttianj and this notion of 
pra U /--generation, or of something which deviates, goes aside or 
md the ordinary course of things, constantly recurs in the 
rhetoric. This is one of the subtilties this writer uses to work 
impressions on our minds and produce unity of effect : but inas- 
much as in the Shakespearian drama the phraseology is controlled 
by the leading conceptions which enter into the theory of the 
piece 1 and is therefore to a certain extent a proof that such con- 
ceptions exist in it. the diction of Cymbdine will show, provided 
the notion oipn -generation is prevalent in the piece, that that 
conception enters into its scheme, and that the piece, therefore. 

1 Tins is particularly set forth in the article on The Winter's Tale. 






CYMBELINE. 55 



presents in that respect an analogy with Bacon's science ; that, in 
short, the classification and nomenclature of the poet and the 
philosopher are identical ; although at the time Cymbeline was 
written Bacon had not given such nomenclature to the world. 
The curious reader, therefore, may find some interest in marking 
the phrases which contain the notion of the Latin prceter, as 
beside, aside, by the side of, near by, beyond, over, together with, 
in addition to, what remains, that is, what is over or in surplus, 
etc. These are copiously scattered through the play, and also an 
unusual number of " aside " speeches, — proofs of the unwearied 
attention of the writer to the most trivial minutice. 

Bacon's third division of Natural History is that of Nature 
wrought or the History of Arts, which he calls also Mechanical 
and Experimental History. 

In this respect, also, the play conforms to Bacon's " plan and 
rule " for a Natural History, since it contains abundant allusions 
to the mechanical and to the practical part of the liberal arts. 
Take, for instance, Iachimo's description of the tapestry of 
Imogen's chamber. 

" It was hang'd 
With tapestry of silk and silver : the story 
Proud Cleopatra, when she met the Roman, 
And Cydnus swell'd above the banks, or for 
The press of boats or pride. A piece of work 
So bravely done, so rich, that it did strive 
In workmanship and value : which I wonder 'd 
Could be so rarely and exactly wrought," etc. 

Act II. Sc. 4. 

This description of a piece of workmanship includes also a com- 
parison of values. 

Another instance is taken from sculpture. 

" The chimney 
Is south the chamber, and the chimney-piece 
Chaste Dian bathing : never saw I figures 
So likely to report themselves : the cutter 
Was as another nature, dumb, outwent her, 
Motion and breath left out." 

Act II. Sc. 1. 

This, also, is a description of a work of art, which involves a 
comparison of merit. 

The next instance is one of mechanical work in silver and gold. 



CYMBELIXE. 

■• T ' -: of the chamber 

tk golden cherubims is fretted : Iter andirons 
[I had forgot them) wart two sinking Ciipids 

~::er. each on one foot standing, nicely 
Depending on their brands.'* 

Act II. Sc. 4. 

Here a work is described in a manner that recalls a passage 
in Bacon's Physiological Remains, where he speaks of the com- 
pounding of metals to be used in "the arts and as materials for 
those things wherein the beauty and lustre are esteemed, as and- 
..>■ and all manner of images, statues, columns, and the like." 

The poet, however, makes his andirons of silver. 

Another instance of handicraft is "the most curious mantle, 
wrought by the hand of the queen-mother." 

The chemical experiments of the Queen with drugs and poisons 
are directly in point. 

The introduction of Jupiter, the Di\ 5 : machina. to bring 
about the catastrophe is an instance of poetical machinery : but 
the most pointed allusion to the mechanical arts is perhaps that 
to the instrument or organ, which is moved by mechanism and 
fills the cave of Belarius with solemn music. 

" My s instrument! 

Ha:. ids ! but what occasion 

Hath Cadwal now to give it motion" 

:v. sc. 2. 

The inventor of this instrument, if he had been acquainted 
with Bacon's writings, might have taken a hint from the history 
entitled P'\\\j men a Universi. in which there is the following 
account : — 

" There were lately with us certain Batavians. who had con- 
structed an instrument, which, when exposed to the sun. uttered 
harmonious sounds. It is probable that this effect used by 

the expansion of heated air. which." | as the original Latin runs) 
"prinriphim motuz I : .it." This last phrase the play lit- 

erally translate- "t 

The frequent mention in the play of arts and crafts is observa- 
ble : and it sometimes leads to false rhetoric, as in the following : 

•• Thithe] .v queen. 

And with mine eyes FU drink the words you send. 
Though ink be made of gall " 

Ac: I. Se. _ 



CYMBELINE. 57 

In the Seventh Aphorism of the " Description of such a natural 
and experimental history as shall suffice to form a basis for phi- 
losophy," Bacon " recommends that all bodies and qualities be, 
as far as possible, reduced to number, weight, measure, and precise 
definition" 

To this precept, also, the play, applying to man's moral nature 
what Bacon applies to physical bodies and qualities, most ingen- 
iously conforms ; the mental and moral qualities of the characters 
being metaphorically reduced to weight, measure, and number, or 
defined under the relations of space and time. The following are 
instances : — 

" Posthumus, 
From whose so many weights of baseness cannot 
A drachm of worth be drawn." 

Act III. Sc. 5. 

I love thee ; I have spoke it ; 
" How much the quantity, the weight as much, 
As I do love my father." 

Act IV. Sc. 2. 

In the following character is measured by extension. 

" You speak him far. 
I do extend him, sir, within himself, crush him together 
Rather than unfold his measure duly." 

Act I. Sc. 1. 
Size is given to guilt. 

" You do remember this stain upon her ? 
Post. Ay, and it doth confirm another stain 
As big as Hell can hold. 
Iach. Will you hear more ? 
Post. Spare your arithmetic. 

Act II. Sc. 4. 

The boundless nature of Csesar's ambition is thus described : — 

" Csesar's ambition 
Which swelVd so much that it did almost stretch 
The sides of the world." 

Act III. Sc. 1. 

On the other hand, pity is fancifully measured by comparing it 
with a very minute object. 

11 If there be 
Yet left in heaven as small a drop of pity 
As a wren's eye, fear'd gods ! a part of it." 

\c( IV. So. 2. 



58 CYMBELINE. 



Xr, 



The lessening magnitude of an object as it recedes in the dis 
tance is made to measure, by inverse proportion, the intensity of 
love. 

" Imogen. Thou should'st have made him 

As little as a crow or less, ere left 
To after eye him. 

Pisanio. Madam, so I did. 

Imo. I would have broke my eye-strings, crack' d 'em, but 
To look upon him : till the diminution 
Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle, 
Nay, follow'd him, till he had melted from 
The smallness of a gnat to air and then 
Have turn'd my eye and wept." Act I. Sc 4. 

Imogen's love and impatience to meet her husband are meas- 
ured by the time and space that must be overcome to meet him. 

" O f or a horse with wings ! Hear'st thou, Pisanio ? 
He is at Milford Haven : Read, and tell me 
How far 't is thither. If one of mean affairs 
May plod it in a week, why may not I 
Glide thither in a day ? . . . 

Pr'y thee, speak, 
How many score of miles may we well ride 
' Twixt sun and sun ? 

Pis. One score, 9 twixt sun and sun, 

Madam, is enough for you, and too much, too. 
Imo. Why, one that rode to his execution, man, 
Could never go so slow." 

Act III. Sc. 2. 

So, also, bulk is attributed to thought and moral worth. 

" My mistress exceeds in goodness the hugeness of your unworthy thinking" 

Act I. Sc. 5. 

The same method is used to produce the comic. 

" Cloten. The villain would not stand me. 

1 Lord. Stand you ! You have land enough of your own, but he added 
to your having ; gave you some ground. 

2 Lord. As many inches as you have oceans : Puppies ! 
Cloten. I would they had not come between us. 

2 Lord, So would I, till you had measured how long a fool you were upon 
the ground." 

Act I. Sc. 2. 

In addition to the measurement of thought and feeling by 
space, time, weight, and quantity, great use is made of price, or 
the measure of value. This accords with the subject of the play, 



CYMBELINE. 59 

which is the comparative worth of men. In all the leading scenes, 
the notion of comparative value in some form is introduced, and 
on every page can be found diction and metaphor drawn from the 
market place, bookkeeping, and the exchanges of value. In- 
stances may be found in the quotations already made for other 
purposes ; but one*or two more may be added. 

The old saying that " death pays all debts " is thus put by the 
gaoler. 

" O the charity of a penny cord ! it sums up thousands in a trice ; you have no 
true debitor or creditor but it ; of what 's past, is, and to come, the discharge. 
"Your neck, sir, is pen, booh and counters ; so the acquittance follows." 

Act V. Sc. 4. 

Or take, as another instance, Posthumus' expression of contri- 
tion in his prayer to the gods. 

" To satisfy, 
If of my freedom 't is the main part, take 
No stricter render of me, than my all. 
I know you are more clement than vile men, 
Who of their broken debtors take a third, 
A sixth, a tenth, letting them thrive again 
On their abatement : that 's not my desire : 
For Imogen's dear life, take mine, and though 
'T is not so dear, yet H is a life : you coined it : 
'Tween man and man, they weigh not every stamp ; 
Though light, take pieces for the figure's sake: 
You rather mine, being yours : and so, great powers, 
If you will take this audit, take this life 
And cancel these cold bonds." 

Act V. Sc. 4. 

Moral values, at times, exceed all measure, as in Posthumus , 
valuation of his ring. Iachimo says to him, in allusion to Imo- 
gen:— 

" If she went before others I have seen, as that diamond of yours out-lustre* 
many I have beheld, I could not but believe she excelled many, but I have iu>< 
seen the most precious diamond that is, nor you the lady. 

Post. I praised her as I rated her : so do I my stone. 
Iach. What do you esteem it at ? 
Post. More than the world enjoys.' 1 

Act I. So. :>. 

The estimate that Posthumus puts upon his ring has a coun- 
terpart in the value Imogen places upon the bracelet which her 
husband had given her. 



60 CYMBELINE. 

•• Go, bid my woman 
Search for a jewel, that too casually 
Hath left my arm : it was thy master's ; shrew me 
If' I would lose it for •: 

Act II. Se. 3. 

Both ring and bracelet have a moral value, for which there is 
no adequate material standard. 

The foregoing examples of bodies and qualities weighed, meas- 
ured, and valued, although metaphorical, are yet so numerous that 
they suffice to show that the play conforms so far as is practica- 
ble to the requirements of the 7th aphorism of Bacon's Description 
of a Xatural History. 

In another aphorism, the third. Bacon directs that in making 
their narrations "men dismiss antiquity and quotations . . . and 
as for the ornaments of speech, similitude*, treasury of eloque 
and such like emptinesses, let them be utterly dismissed, nay, let 
all those things which are admitted be set down briefly and con- 
cisely, so that they may be nothing less than words." 

This precept is well observed by Guiderius. in his account of 
Cloten's fate : it is a particularly brief and concise statement of 
an important fact, a statement which is "nothing less than 
words/' 

u Let me end the story ; 
/ slew him there. 

- n. Marry, the gods forefeud ! 

I would not thy good deeds should from my lips 
Pluck a harsh sentence ; prythee, valiant youth. 
Deny ? t again. 

/ have spoke it and - 

Act V. Se. 5. 

On the other hand the precept is violated to a remarkable degree 
by Iachimo's narrative of the wager and of his fraudulent mode 
of winning it. Xo doubt. Iachimo's reluctance to confess his vil- 
lainy causes him to wind about with circumstance ; and his Ital- 
ian cunning leads him to obscure the facts as much as possible in 
a cloud of words, so that his delay in coming to the point is in 
character : still the narrative, with its " similitudes " and superflu- 
ous rhetoric, is on these accounts all the more a pointed illustra- 
tion of the neglect of Bacon's rule requiring all statements to be 
and nothing hss fla.n words. 






CYMBELINE. 61 

" Upon a time (unhappy was the clock 
That struck the hour !) it was in Rome (accurs'd 
The mansion where !) 't was at a feast (O would 
Our viands had been poison'd or at least 
Those which I heav'd to head !) the good Posthumus 
(What should I say ? he was too good to be 
Where ill men were ; and was the best of all 
Amongst the rarest of good ones) sitting sadly, 
Hearing us praise our loves of Italy 
For beauty that made barren the swell'd boast 
Of him that best could speak ; for feature laming 
The shrine of Venus or straight-pight Minerva, 
Postures beyond brief nature ; for condition 
A shop of all the qualities, that man 
Loves woman for ; beside that hook of wiving 
Fairness that strikes the eye." 

Cymbeline, eager to learn the fate of his child, breaks in on 
this excessive flow of ornamental rhetoric, with 

" / stand on fire, 
Come to the matter" 

Iachimo resumes the narrative, but still fills it with irrelevant 
statements. 

" This Posthumus 
(Most like a noble lord in love and one 
That had a royal lover) took this hint ; 
And not dispraising whom we prais'd (therein 
He was as calm as virtue) he began 
His mistress' picture, which by his tongue being made 
And then a mind put in 't, either our brags 
Were crack'd of kitchen trulls, or his description 
Prov'd us unspeaking sots." 

Act V. Sc. 5. 

And again, Cymbeline, losing patience with this prolixity and 
" emptiness," exclaims — 

" Nay, nay, to the purpose." 

The remainder of the narrative, though disclosing the facts, is 
still characterized by needless "similitudes," comparisons, and 
allusions to " antiquity," and the whole passage is an admirable 
illustration of a statement of the highest importance rendered 
prolix by profuse and unnecessary ornament and imagery. 

It maybe contrasted with Belarius' terse accounts of the abduc- 
tion of the princes. 



62 CYMBELIXE. 

The foregoing citations make it quite apparent that the play 
corresponds so far as is consistent with dramatic form in numer- 
ous passages with the subjects and mode of treatment laid down 
by Bacon as the matter and the plan of a Natural History for 
purposes of induction. 

After the collection, however, of a sufficient store of materials 
for induction, the next step in Bacon's system is M to digest and 
arrange this mass of facts into tables and regular order, that the 
mind may be able to act upon it and perform its office." 

" All the particulars that pertain to the subject of inquiry 
shall, b j means of Tables of Discovery ', apt. well-arranged and as 
it ice re animate, be drawn up and marshaled and the mind be 
set to work upon the helps duly prepared and digested which 
such Tables supply." Nov. Org. Book I. Aph. 102. 

The last scene of this play, if not intended as a dramatic par- 
allel to such a table, will at any rate answer for one. for in it are 
brought together and tabulated, as it were, all the events that are 
dispersed in an irregular and disconnected manner through the 
previous four acts. At the opening of this scene, all the char- 
acters, each of whom has accurate knowledge derived from per- 
sonal experience on some one point, are involved generally in a 
maze of error, ignorance, and perplexity. Posthumus supposes 
Imogen to be dead : Imogen is confident that Posthumus has 
been murdered by Cloten and that she has seen his dead body 
buried by Lucius and his soldiers ; she is convinced also that the 
drug given her by Pisanio as a medicine was a poison intended 
to take her life : her flight from the Court is a mvsterv to all but 
Pisanio, who. nevertheless, is at a loss to conjecture what has 
become of her and " remains perplexed, in all : " Cloten's death 
is known only to Guiderius and his companions : the knowledge 
that the children of the king (who have not been heard of in 
twenty years) are alive is confined to Belarius, who also is the 
only person that can explain the mode of their abduction and 
the motives for it : the existence of Belarius in his true character 
is unknown to all and even his reputed sons think him i; old Mor- 
gan : " Imogen is disguised as Fidele and is supposed by the 
two princes to be dead, and they, in ignorance of her being their 
sister, perform her obsequies : Iachimo alone is acquainted with 
the treachery practiced upon Imogen, and also upon Posthumus ; 
the poor soldier who aid- in winning the battle disappears and 



. 



CYMBELINE. 63 



cannot be found, " though searched among the dead and living ; " 
the plots of the Queen are hidden from all until her dying hour, 
and none but Cornelius, the physician, can account for Fidele's 
apparent revival from death. No one of the characters has a 
general or connected knowledge of these events, but each has 
a personal experience which can throw light upon a few particu- 
lars, about which the others are grossly in error. It is only by 
bringing them together, so that by their respective discoveries 
these disconnected and dispersed events can be arranged in due 
order and formed, as it were, into a Table of Discovery (so far 
as is consistent with dramatic dialogue), that their causes, con- 
nections and relations can be clearly shown and the whole truth 
made manifest. But before setting out this synopsis or table of 
facts, let us examine what Bacon meant by induction. 

Induction appertains to the Art of Judging. Treating of the 
Judgment, Bacon says, " The art of Judging handleth the nature 
of proof s and demonstrations. This art, as it is commonly re- 
ceived, concludes either by induction or syllogism." [De Aug. 
Book V. ch. 4. 

Syllogism and induction are converse processes of the mind. 
By the syllogism is proved that what is true of a whole class is 
true of each member of the class ; by induction is proved that 
which is true of all the parts is true of the whole. This last is 
unquestionably a valid argument provided the enumeration of the 
parts is complete, but one contradictory instance overthrows the 
conclusion ; consequently Bacon rejected this ordinary form of 
induction no less than the syllogism as a means of investigating 
nature, and says : — 

"Therefore for the real and exact form of the judgment we 
refer ourselves to what we have spoken of Interpretation of 
nature." 

What was this "Interpretation of Nature " ? Bacon hacTgiven 
no explanation of what he meant by it at the time Cymbeline was 
written, nor from anything then published could Shakespeare 
know what Bacon's system was, and consequently could not 
know, unless from personal intercourse with Bacon, that it was an 
essential feature of that system to found the interpretation o\ 
nature on history or experience or that such history was to be 
digested into tables; for in the Advancement, which was all that 
Bacon had published at this time, he says nothing on these 



64 CYMBELINE. 






points, but only makes a promise to explain his system in some 
future work. 

This promise Bacon, though writing treatises on this subject 
in the same year that Cynibeline was produced, did not keep 
until the year 1620, when the Novum Organum was published. 
In that work he says : — 

" Another form of induction must be devised than has hitherto 
been employed . . . The induction which proceeds by simple 
enumeration is childish ; its conclusions are precarious and ex- 
posed to peril from one contradictory instance, and it generally 
decides on too small a number of facts and those only which are 
at hand. But the induction which is to be available for the dis- 
covery and demonstration of sciences and arts . . . should ana- 
lyze nature by proper rejections and exclusions and then after 
a sufficient number of negatives, come to a conclusion on the 
affirmative instances " (Nov. Org. Book I. Aph. 105), that is, by 
collecting and comparing many instances and proofs, which so 
far as they are inconsistent, mutually negative, exclude or limit 
each other, we are enabled to conclude the truth from the affirma- 
tive that remains. 

Of this method, the play furnishes an apt example by bringing 
in and comparing the various experiences of the characters, by 
which a synopsis or table of facts is presented and the mistakes 
and errors into which they all in some respects had fallen are 
corrected and excluded. 

By the result of the battle, the personages of the drama, either 
as victors or vanquished, are unexpectedly brought together. Of 
these, some are disguised and unknown, and even those between 
whom there are the closest ties of relationship are ignorant of 
each other's existence. Each of these personages represents a 
certain amount of experience, a portion of which is true know- 
ledge and a portion erroneous inference through some mistake of 
the judgment or of the sense. The object is to form a table of 
facts, which, by comparing particulars, shall exclude or correct 
these errors, clear up what is perplexed and mysterious, and by 
revealing the causes of the events in the motives that prompted 
them enable the mind to judge of the true natures and characters 
of the actors. 

And, first, Cornelius the physician announces to the king the 
death of the Queen. He repeats her dying words in which she 



CYMBELINE. 65 

confesses the mortal hatred which she had harbored for the king 

o 

and for Imogen and the designs that she meditated against their 
lives. By this discovery, Cymbeline's mind is disabused of its 
gross infatuation. He says : — 

" She alone knew this, 
And, but she spoke it dying, I would not 
Believe her lips, in opening it." 

And he owns that the Queen's influence over him had been the 
cause of his perverted feeling and judgment towards Imogen. 

The Roman captives having been introduced, Cymbeline pro- 
ceeds to sentence them to death, when Lucius pleads for the life 
of his page Fidele (the disguised Imogen) who, at once, through 
sympathy of blood, is taken into favor by the king and is promised 
any boon fitting the king's bounty to bestow. 

Imogen thereupon demands that Iachimo may render of whom 
he had the ring he was then wearing, it being the ring he had 
won from Posthumus. This forces Iachimo to confess his villain- 
ous " design in visiting Britain " and the treachery he had prac- 
ticed upon both Imogen and Posthumus ; a discovery by which 
Posthumus, who is standing by unknown, is made aware of his 
grievous error in relying upon false oaths and mere signs of his 
wife's guilt, and of his still more terrible mistake in ordering her 
to be put to death. 

He thereupon discovers himself, confesses the murder of his 
wife, and calls for punishment upon his head. Imogen, who until 
then had believed him dead, moved by his distress, speaks to him 
with intent to undeceive him ; and this, together with the inter- 
vention of Pisanio, who recognizes his mistress, leads him to per- 
ceive that Fidele is no other than Imogen, so that both husband 
and wife, at almost the same moment, are made conscious of the 
great error into which each had fallen with regard to the other's 
death ; the one through false testimony, the other through an er- 
roneous inference and a deception of the sense. 

Imogen, upon seeing Pisanio, and remembering the effect of 
the drug upon her, accuses him of giving her poison: hut this 
mistake is corrected by Cornelius, who gives an account of the 
Queen's experiments, and acknowledges that, "dreading thai her 
purpose was of danger, " he had furnished her with a powerful 
opiate instead of the poison she had asked for, and that it was of 
this that Imogen had taken. 
5 



66 CYMBELINE. 

By this statement, Belarius and his reputed sons are apprised 
of the error into which they had fallen when they mistook Fidele's 
trance for a real death, and their wonder and perplexity at seeing 
the seeming page alive after having performed his obsequies are 
consequently removed. 

Belarius, moreover, learning that Fidele is Imogen, the sister 
of the two princes, sees in the sympathy of blood "the motive " 
or cause of the sudden affection (which had seemed tb him almost 
miraculous) that had sprung up between the princes and the wan- 
dering boy. 

In the mean time, Cymbeline, overjoyed at finding Imogen, 
assures her that their previous estrangement had been owing to 
the Queen, who had since died, and that Cloten had most unac- 
countably disappeared ; at which Pisanio discloses that Cloten 
had enforced from him a suit of the garments of Posthumus and 
that, clad in these, he had posted with "unchaste purpose" to 
Wales, but adds that he knows nothing of what had become of 
him. 

Guiderius, however, supplements Pisanio's story by avowing 
that he had had an encounter with Cloten and had taken his head 
from him, — a discovery which enables Imogen to perceive the 
mistake into which her judgment had been led by inferring that 
the headless body of Cloten was that of Posthumus. 

The frank avowal of Guiderius that he had slain the prince 
drawing down a sentence of death upon him, Belarius, who had 
passed as " old Morgan," throws, off his disguise, owns himself a 
banished man, confesses the abduction of the princes and "his 
end in stealing them," and concludes by presenting to the king as 
his own blood and issue the two youths, who are identified by un- 
mistakable birthmarks and tokens. 

And finally, after all these errors are corrected and these mys- 
teries cleared up, Posthumus, in answer to Cymbeline's expressions 
of regret that the forlorn soldier who had so nobly fought cannot 
be found, acknowledges himself to have been that soldier, dis- 
guised in poor beseeming, it being " a fitment for the purpose he 
then followed." 

And thus hj inducting or bringing in the various personages 
and by arranging in due order and comparing their different 
proofs or experiences, a table of facts is formed, whereby the gross 
errors and false conclusions into which they each had fallen are 






CYMBELINE. 67 

reciprocally corrected and eliminated, the secret motives and pur- 
poses, and consequently the real nature of each particular charac- 
ter, is specially and distinctly revealed, and the true causes of all 
that is hidden or inexplicable in the events laid bare. 

This rapid compend, or "fierce abridgment" as Cymbeline 
calls it, is, perhaps, as close an imitation of a " table of dis- 
covery," or what Bacon sometimes calls " a coordination of in- 
stances," as could be expected in an acting drama, where the for- 
mation of the table and the process of induction are represented 
in dramatic action and by living actors ; but the real point of the 
imitation is that the scene represents the mode by which the er- 
rors and false conclusions, which have arisen either by the decep- 
tion of the senses or by false inference or by too great a reliance 
upon mere signs and secondary evidence, are corrected by experi- 
ence. This is the essential point of the Baconian induction and 
in this respect the scene is perfect. 

Nor has the dramatist omitted an instance of false induction or 
conclusion from simple enumeration without instance contradictory, 
a method which Bacon repeatedly denounces as puerile, g?*oss, 
childish, etc. 

In his De Augmentis, he thus speaks of this ordinary logical 
induction : — 

"To conclude upon a bare enumeration of particulars as the 
logicians do, without contradictory instance, is a vicious conclusion. 
Nor does this kind of induction produce more than a probable 
conjecture. For who can assure himself when the particulars 
which he knows or remembers appear only on one side, that there 
are not others on the contrary side which appear not ? as if 
Samuel should have rested upon those sons of Jesse who were 
brought before him in the house and not have sought David, who 
was in the field." De Aug. Book V. ch. 2. 

This is illustrated by the false induction made by Imogen with 
respect to the headless body of Cloten, which, from the garments 
and other points of resemblance, she concludes to be that of 
Posthumus. It should be observed that the dramatic situation is 
of that wild and improbable kind that is known only to the 
legendary drama, and its pathos depends upon the reader's yield- 
ing implicitly to the poetic imagination. On this account, when 
the lines are cited as an example to illustrate a philosophical prin- 
ciple (which, of course, translates them into prose), they become 



68 CY1 HE. 

almost lndici as. ps, striking as an 

illustration of the " - 'dof induc- 

A headless man ! the garm* 
Ik: this is Aw ha 

Mercurial : his Martial thigh: 
brawns of Hercules : but his Jovial face. — 
Muriher in he ris _; >ue. 

. . . C 7 : tthu i tl alas 
-e 's % ibwd * wh : ? ah me ! where 'a 

This is Ise si e numeration 

gen is 1 lading fi small a number of 

taking int ant the 3e contra 

head, which, 
the 

and ain is t supply the 

ministrations and h 
a shall mat tion of nature. Hei 

I I ganum or the $£nt- 

merr. ith the : : the play, which assn > 

mi:: 5 asti :— . 

rhe: : the pic with this dominant 

ion an d s of hi . instru- 

me:. ::'.;. T this thought may be 

E-the - s f or inst 

s u 5, speaks of the 

amns calls re] e " the \ ~ 

nscience. In the following 
measureme: an hour-g] ss the notion of 

1 in a very quaint and ingenious way. 

heard of riding 
Where horses have been nimbler than the sands 
That run in the clock's Mi 

h have been in ages pointed 

• een the play ai nines ; :he Art 

fudging — which in fa and front of Bac 

and for which he inv tpparatos of his 

tables, char:-. ar to be red also io the 

y minor poi: h as the tody and of Trent* 



CYMBELINE. 69 

mission, which come in for exemplification, as, for instance, one 
of the helps of the memory is writing and this comes under the 
head of the third of the logical arts set down by Bacon as the Art 
of Custody or Memory. 

" The art of memory," says Bacon, " is divided into two parts : 
viz., the doctrine of helps for the memory and the doctrine of the 
memory itself. The great help to the memory is writing. And 
this is particularly the case in inductive philosophy and in the 
interpretation of nature ; for one might as well attempt to go 
through the calculations of an Ephemeris in his head without the 
aid of writing as to master the interpretation of nature by the 
natural and naked force of thought and memory without the help 
of tables duly arranged." De Aug. Book V. ch. 5. 

Of writing as a help to the memory, an example is given in 
Iachimo's taking notes of Imogen's chamber. 

a But my design 
To note the chamber : I will write all down : 
Such and such pictures : There the window; such 
The adornment of her bed : The arras, figures, 
Why, such and such. And the contents of the story. 
Ah, but some natural notes about her body 
Above ten thousand meaner movables 
Would testify, to enrich mine inventory. 

. . . No more ! To what end ? 
Why should I write this down, that 's riveted, 
Screwed to my memory ? " 

Act II. Sc. 2. 

Among helps or " ministrations " to the memory Bacon pre- 
scribes a list of interrogatories to be appended to the history of 
any subject propounded touching such points as need to be 
inquired into. These he calls "Topics or Articles of Enquiry." 
Works, vol. vii. p. 49. See, also, The Rule of Nat. and Ex. Hist., 
vol. ix. p. 376. 

.In his own histories he always made use of such topics : they 
were part of his method. 

There is a passage in the play which may Ix* taken as a 
parallel of these "topics" or interrogatories, where Cymbeline 
having heard enough of the facts to furnish a clue t<> inquiry, 
exclaims : — 

" When shall I hear all through ? This fierce abridgment 
Hath t<> if circumstantial branches, which 



70 GYMBELINE. 

Distinction should be rich in. Where, how liv'd you, 

And when cume you to serve our Roman captive f 

How ported with your brothers f how first met them? 

Why fled you from the Court f and whither/ These, 

And your three motives to the battle, with 

J know not how much more, should be demanded; 

And oil the other by-dependencies 

From chance to chance, but nor the time nor place 

Will servo OUT long intt r' </atories." 

Act V. So. 5. 

The tabulation of facts was also one of the " helps of the 
memory." [achimo, in order to emphasize the deliberate nature 
of his judgment upon Posthumus, refers to a method of tabulating' 
facts for the purpose of interpreting them. " I could have looked 
upon him without the help of admiration, though the catalogue 
of his endowments had been tabled by his side and I to peruse 
him by items" 

Of the last of the four logical arts, viz., the art of Transmis- 
sion, Bacon thus speaks: — 

" We next proceed to the art of Transmitting' or of producing 
and ex [uessing to others those things which have been invented, 
judged and laid up in the memory, which I will call by a general 
name. The Art of Transmission. This art includes all the arts 
which relate to words and discourse. 

"The doctrine concerning the organ of discourse has two parts, 
the one relating to speech, the other to writing, For Aristotle 
says rightly that * words are the images of thoughts and letters 
o( words/ . . . But the Art of Transmission has some other 
children besides words and letters" 

"The notes of things which carry a signification without the 
help or intervention o( words are of two kinds. ... Of the 
first kind are hieroglyphics and gestures; of the second are real 
characters. . . . Gestures are transitory hieroglyphics^ for as 
uttered words fly away, but written words stand, so hieroglyphics 
expn SSi d by gestures pass, but when expressed in pictures remain. 
For, when Periander, being consulted with how to preserve a 
tyranny, bade the messenger follow him and went into the garden 
and topped all the highest flowers, hinting at the cutting off the 
nobility, he made use o)i a hieroglyphic just as much as if he had 
drawn it on paper." De Aug. Book VI. eh. 1. 

Of transitory hieroglyphics, a very beautiful illustration and 



CYMBELINE. 71 



one perfectly analogous with Periander's topping the flowers is 
introduced into the play. It occurs in Pisanio's account of the 
embarkation and sailing of Posthumus, and observe how the feel- 
ing of reluctance at parting is measured inversely by the velocity 
of the ship. 

" So long 

As he could make me with this eye or ear 

Distinguish him from others, he did keep 

»The deck with glove or hat or handkerchief 
Still waving, as the fits and stirs of his mind 
Could best express how slow his soul saiVd on, 
How swift his ship." 
Act I. Sc. 4. 

The doctrine of " The Notes of Things," which comprises ges- 
tures and bodily expressions, is largely illustrated throughout the 
play — a play which views the world as a living history, a know- 
ledge of which is gained, so far as man is concerned, by interpret- 
ing not merely his words, but also his looks and gestures, as the 
outward characters or notes in which is written his inward charac- 
ter or nature. 

The same doctrine is copiously exemplified by the acting and 
simulation of Iachimo, and an instance, even on a broader scale, 
of gesticulation and action used to convey a meaning is " the 
dumb show " introduced into the last act. Some critics of a high 
name have conjectured that this scene together with the vision 
of Posthumus is a relic of an older play, on which Shakespeare 
founded his drama ; but there does not appear to be a particle 
of evidence that such older play ever existed ; besides, this dumb 
show and the vision are both interwoven with the previous con- 
duct of the plot and with its subsequent catastrophe. But be this 
as it may, its pantomime is an excellent example, whether in- 
tended for one or not, of the doctrine of the " interpretation of 
the notes of things." 

And, in fact, had there been an older play containing passages 
that he could utilize, this dramatist in all probability would not 
have hesitated a moment to adopt them, lie seemed to have pur- 
poses in view which rendered literary reputation and charges ol 
plagiarism of secondary importance. Whatever came in his way 

that suited his purpose, he seized upon and made his own. He is 
to the extant literature of his day 

" As is the osprey fco the fish, who takes it 
IVy sovereignty of nature." 



72 CYMBELINE. 






Besides, it saved time. He therefore levied contributions upon 
all the authors he could make available, whether ancient or 
modern. The beautiful passage which he puts into the mouth of 
Imogen on the departure of Posthumus, he took from Ovid ; but 
as he uses it, he converts it into an instance of the measurement 
of an emotion by space and distance ; thus making it conform to 
" the directions for a Natural History." 

The play, moreover, concludes with two instances of interpreta- 
tion by the soothsayer Philarmonus (a lover of fitness or con- 
gruity), one of a dream, the other of the enigmatical tablet left 
with Posthumus ; the poet thus putting apparently a mark upon 
the play itself to denote in some measure its special significance. 
And but for these interpretations, the character of the Soothsayer 
is superfluous, he taking no part in the action. 

The side of language exemplified in this play is that of w r ritten 
characters or " images of words," that require interpretation. 
This accords with the wdiole tenor of the piece. 

The proofs of history are writings or what is in the nature of 
writing, as monuments, relics, and other signs and characters in 
which the events of the past are written and through which the 
life of bygone times is interpreted, and it is noteworthy that 
the plot of this dramatic history is carried forward by the agency 
of letters, signs, and tokens. Posthumus and Imogen exchange 
love tokens — a bracelet and a ring — of which one becomes the 
apparent proof of her guilt, the other leads to the proof of her 
innocence ; a letter from Posthumus ensures for Iachimo a wel- 
come at the hands of Imogen ; her answer to it is converted by the 
art of Iachimo into a corroborative proof of her guilt ; Posthu- 
mus' letter, requesting Imogen to meet him at Milford, induces 
her to fly the Court ; another to Pisanio instructs him to put her 
to death on the journey ; this last, having been read by her, is 
the cause of her subsequent wanderings ; Pisanio writes to his 
master that his orders have been obeyed, and sends him a bloody 
cloth as a sign of it ; the Emperor issues his " writ " to the 
tribunes ; he writes to his ambassador Lucius, and Lucius to him ; 
a letter that Cloten forces from Pisanio is the cause of his seek- 
ing the mountains of Wales, where he meets his death, and a 
letter or " tablet " from no less a personage than Jupiter himself 
reveals to Posthumus as well his own fortunes as those of his king 
and country. 



CYMBELINE. 73 

The rhetoric of the piece is highly colored with the same 
notions. Words significant of marks, notes, signs, etc., occur on 
every page. Observe how deftly the dramatist introduces his 
leading conceptions, — in describing the cooking of Fidele, 
Guiderius says " he cut our roots in characters" etc. So, too, 
Lucius, in giving assurance to the friendless Fidele of his pro- 
tection, says : — 

*' The Roman emperor's letters 
Sent by a consul to me, should not sooner 
Than thine own words prefer thee." 

The style of Cymbeline is narrative or historical, and abounds 
in recitals of facts and particulars. The characters of the play 
in their mental processes make use of the inductive method, and 
their errors arise from concluding upon too few particulars and 
insufficient evidence. Their arguments, for the most part, have, 
as the logicians say, no middle, being derived from experience 
and analogy, from example, induction and parity of reasoning. 
They draw inferences from like to like, from the past to the 
present or future, and generalize particular facts into universal 
truths. A few examples may be cited in order to show the 
adaptation of the style to the artistic form of the piece as well as 
of the mental processes of the characters to its philosophy. 

The Queen rests her argument for the non-payment of tribute 
on parity of reasoning and experience. 

" That opportunity 
Which then they had to take from us, to resume 
We have again. Remember, sir, my liege, 
The kings your ancestors, together with 
The natural bravery of your isle," etc. 

..." A kind of conquest 
Ca3sar made here ; but made not here his brag 
Of came and saw and overcame : With shame 
{The first that ever touched him), he was carried 
From off our coast twice beaten," etc. 

Cymbeline adds an argument drawn from example. 

" I am perfect 
That the Pannonians and Dalmatians, for 
Their liberties are now in arms ; a precedent 
Which not to read would shote the Britonscold : 
So Caisar shall not find them." 

Posthumus, in his jealous rage, seeks to prove by induction, 



74 



CYMBELINE. 



that is, the fallacious induction of the logicians or " the enumera- 
tion of all the parts without instance contradictory" — that ah I 
the vices of man are derived from woman. 

" Could I find out 
The woman's part in me ! for there 's no motion 
That tends to vice in man, but I affirm 
It is the woman 's part ; be 't lying, note it, 
The woman's ; flattering, hers; deceiving, hers; 
Lust and rank thoughts, hers, hers; revenges, hers; 
Ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdains, 
Nice longings, slanders, mutability, 
All faults that may be nam'd, nay, that hell knoics, 
Why, hers, in part or all ; but rather all ; 
For even to vice, they are not constant," etc. 

Posthumus, when convinced that Imogen, whose purity and 
truth he had never doubted, is utterly false, is hurried by his 
feelings into a generalization of the fact. 

" Let there be no honor 
Where there is beauty ; truth, where semblance; love, 
Where there 's another man. The vows of women 
Of no more bondage be, to where they are made, 
Than they are to their virtues ; which is nothing : 
above measure false" 

Act II. Sc. 4. 
On the other hand, Imogen, whose sound judgment is rarely 
led into error, does not herself generalize the case ©f Posthumus 
(supposed to be false), but infers that others will do so to the 
great injury of true and honest men; and brings forward the 
examples of .Eneas and Sinon as proofs of the injustice worked 
by such perfidy. 

" All good seeming 
By thy revolt, O husband, shall be thought 
Put on for villainy ; not born, where 't grows ; 
But worn, a bait for ladies. 
True honest men being heard, like false Mneas, 
Were, in his time, thought false ; and Sinon's weeping 
Bid scandal many a holy tear ; took pity 
From most true wretchedness : So thou, Posthumus, 
Wilt lay the leaven on all proper meu ; 
Goodly and gallant shall be false and perjur'd 
From thy great fail" 

Act III. Sc. 4. 

Cloten, assigning reasons for his love, rests his argument on an 



CYMBELINE. 75 

induction from those particulars which render Imogen superior to 
all other women. 

" For she 's fair and royal, 
And that she hath all courtly parts more exquisite 
Than lady, ladies, woman ; from every one 
The best she hath, and she of all compounded 
Outsells them all" 

Act III. Sc. 5. 

Iachimo, affecting to be amazed that Posthumus should be un- 
true to Imogen for the sake of one so inferior as her Italian rival, 
seeks the cause by induction, and, brief as it is, it reminds us of 
the Baconian method of negatives and exclusion. 

" Imo. What makes your admiration ? 
Iach. , It cannot be i' the eye; for apes and monkeys 
'Twixt two such shes would chatter this way, and 
Contemn with mows the other : Nor i* the judgment y 
For idiots in this case of favor would 
Be wisely definite : Nor i 9 the appetite," etc. 

Act I. Sc. 5. 

Examples could be multiplied ad libitum. The habit of mind 
of all the characters is inductive, and the whole piece is, with a 
surprising mastery of style, written inductively from beginning to 
end. There must be excepted, however, the enormous error of 
Posthumus, who founds his belief in his wife's guilt upon conclu- 
sions drawn from false testimony and other signs. 

This analysis, thus far, has treated only of the mental and 
moral elements of the piece and has left almost untouched its 
practical or active side which, however, is presented with a similar 
depth and simplicity. All action springs from a purpose ; for ." the 
wits of men," says Bacon, " are the shops wherein all actions are 
forged," and the business of practical life lies in the prosecution 
of plans and purposes, from which men expect, if not the attain- 
ment of happiness, at least their advancement in wealth or rank. 
And so in Cymbeline, we may observe that the characters are 
respectively in eager pursuit of some purpose, by which they hope 
to better their condition and rise in the world. In all undertak- 
ings, however, there is an element of risk, which renders their 
execution subject to the proverbial sway of fortune ; and success 
in life is, in common speech, the making of one's fortune. It is 
this construction of the plot that renders the play (whether acci- 
dentally or not) a good illustration of that branch of Civil Know- 



76 CYMBELINE. 

ledge laid down by Bacon in his division of the sciences as " the 
knowledge of negotiation," and more particularly that subdivision 
of such knowledge which is denominated by him " the Architect 
of Fortune or the Knowledge of Advancement in Life." This, as 
a doctrine, was original with Bacon, and is enumerated by him 
among 1 the deficiencies of learning:. Not that the doctrine was 
not practiced — for every man practices it to some extent — but 
that it had not been reduced to method and equipped with pre- 
cepts. 

" This doctrine," says Bacon, " has its precepts, some summary 
and some scattered or various, whereof the former relate to a just 
knowledge of ourselves and others. 

" Knowledge of men may be derived and obtained in six differ- 
ent ways, viz. : by their countenances and expressions, their words, 
their actions, their dispositions, their ends, and by the report of 
others." De Aug. Book VIII. ch. 2. 

This obviously accords, or rather, is identical with that know- 
ledge of men which, by the theory of the play, we acquire by 
reading words, looks, and actions ; and the same knowledge which 
enables us to judge of men's worth and assign them their rank, 
also enables us to estimate their value as assistants in the affairs 
of life. 

The precepts laid down by Bacon for obtaining the knowledge 
of others and of ourselves are- profound and original, but too 
copious to be quoted at length. Extracts, however, will be made 
as they may be wanted for particular application. 

In addition to these " summary " precepts, Bacon sets forth 
numerous " scattered and various " ones ; and then, after citing 
sundry pernicious maxims of Machiavelli and other unscrupulous 
politicians, adds " that of the like depraved doctrines, as in all 
other things, there are a greater number than of the wise and 
good. Now if any man takes pleasure in such kind of corrupt 
wisdom, I will not certainly deny that with these dispensations 
from all the laws of charity and virtue and an entire devotion 
to the pressing of his fortune he may advance it quicker and 
more compendiously." De Aug. Book VIII. ch. 2. 

A marked instance of this corrupt and tainted prudence is the 
Queen. She is entirely " devoted to pressing her fortune," having 
no thought but for the aggrandizement of herself and family ; and 
so far has she " dispensed with the laws of charity and virtue " 



CYMBELINE. 77 

that she is utterly unscrupulous in all respects. Her knowledge 
of men is profound. She tempts Pisanio with promises of prefer- 
ment in order to corrupt his fidelity, but all the while looks clean 
through him and clearly reads his stubborn honesty. 

" A sly and constant knave ; 
Not to be shak'd : the agent for his master," etc. 

She therefore resolves to remove him, and to that end places in 
his hands a poison which she assures him is a precious remedy, 
and this she does with so much kindness in her words that he 
is imposed upon, though on his guard. 

Her dissimulation is absolute and she exemplifies in the highest 
degree the deceitfulness of words ; nor does her duplicity desert 
her until the last moment ; she then illustrates that remark of 
Bacon's who, speaking of knowing men by their words and of the 
trickery and deceit that lurk in them, says " that there are few 
so true to their own secrets and of so close a temper, but that 
sometimes through anger, sometimes through bravado, sometimes 
through a weakness of mind unable any longer to bear the burden 
of its thoughts . . . they open and communicate their secret 
thoughts and feelings; whence the poet not unjustly calls these 
perturbations tortures." De Aug. Book VIII. oh. 2. 

And so it falls out with this profoundly close and dissimulat- 
ing woman, — although in the play the illustration is carried, of 
course, to an ideal extreme, — the torment of her mind at the 
absence of her son and the disappointment of her hopes drive her 
to unbosom her crimes and the long concealed antipathies she had 
entertained. 

" She, failing of her end by his strange absence, 
Grew shameless-desperate; open'd, in despite 
Of heaven and men, her purposes; repented 
The evils she hatch 9 d were not effected ; so 
Despairing diedP 

Cloten, also, seeks to rise in the world, but he is a negative 
instance ; an eminent failure. He is an aspirant for the hand 
of Imogen, the heiress of the throne, partly instigated by his 
mother's ambitious counsels but more by the conviction thai if 
"he could get this foolish Imogen, he should have gold enough ; 
but Cloten's wooing arouses merely hate and scorn: he therefore 
tries the. arts of policy and attempts to bribe one of the attendants 
of the princess, which excites only ridicule: he seeks, moreover. 



78 CYMBELINE. 






to corrupt the fidelity of Pisanio by promises of preferment, 
but is met by deception. Even in gaming and playing at bowls 
— to which he is addicted — fortune does not smile upon him- 
" Was there ever man had such luck ! " he exclaims, " when I 
kissed the jack, upon an up-cast to be hit away ! I had a hun- 
dred pounds on 't." 

Cloten knows neither other men nor himself. His aims are 
groveling, his plans absurd, his execution rash. Bacon warns 
men from being carried " by presumption of mind to things too 
difficult/' Cloten falls into this error. Forgetful that he has 
been worsted in an assault which he made upon Posthumus, he 
seeks the forest in order to provoke an encounter with him and 
put him to death. In his self-confidence and presumption, he 
thus communes with himself, — and the passage is a good speci- 
men of that irony of fate which this poet is so fond of depicting. 

" What mortality is! Posthumus, thy head, which is now growing upon thy 
shoulders, shall within this hour be off. . . . Out, sword, and to a sore pur- 
pose!" 

Directly after, falling in with Guiderius, he wantonly attacks 
the young outlaw, who quickly deprives him of his head with the 
very sword he had drawn for the " sore purpose " of beheading 
Posthumus. 

Belarius is another phase of character, that results from the 
pursuit of success. He has been a distinguished soldier. 

" His report was once 
First with the best of note. 
And when a soldier was the theme, his name 
Was not far off." 

Honored and loved by the king, he had yet been falsely accused 
of treason, and driven into exile. This injustice does not so much 
harden his heart nor sour his temper as it opens his eyes to the 
vanity of ambition and the hollowness of its prizes. To the 
young lads, who think him their father, he descants feelingly on 
the arts of the Court and the uncertain favor of princes. Though 
housed in the rock, he finds a life at honest freedom, " nobler, 
richer, prouder " than that of the servile and luxurious Court, and 
has learned from experience, 

" That often, to our comfort, shall we find 
The sharded beetle in a safer hold 
Than is the full-wing'd eagle. " 



CYMBELINE. 79 

On the other hand, the two young princes are embodiments of 
that high spirit, which is eager, by some valorous deed, to win 
distinction. They long for action and to strike a blow for honor. 
To the prudent advice of the aged Belarius not to join in the 
approaching battle, they reply : — 

" Arv. What pleasure, sir, find we in life, to lock it 
From action and adventure f 

I am asham'd 
To look upon the holy sun, to have 
The benefit of his bless 'd beams, remaining 
So long a poor unknown. 
Guid. By heavens, I '11 go," etc. 

They join the king's party, and by their valor render services 
so great that they are rewarded with the highest dignities. 

The pursuit of success, however, finds its most direct and 
forcible instance in Iachimo's attempt to win the wager. This 
story of the wager in its circumstances and details belongs to 
mediaeval romance, yet the attempt to win is in principle the same 
as any undertaking in which ability and skill are staked against 
chances of failure. Fortune is the mistress of events and is 
always in the field either for us or against us, for not to have bad 
luck is good luck. 

lachimo enters on the trial at the greatest risk ; on the issue 
hangs a question of life and death as well as a direct gain or loss 
of material value. Success can only be secured, if at all, by that 
prime quality of boldness which Bacon, in his Essay on Boldness, 
declares to be in affairs what action is in oratory, first, second, and 
third ; and among the particular precepts for success or rising in 
life, he lays down that " the sinews of fortune are the sinews and 
steel of men's minds, such as courage, audacity, resolution, temper, 
and the like." lachimo has apparently studied in the same 
school and thus apostrophizes this quality : — 

" Boldness, be my friend ! 
Arm me, audacity, from head to foot ! 
Or, like the Parthian, I shall Hying* fight ; 
Rather, directly fly." 

lachimo is qualified to command success, were it possible. He 
possesses audacity in the highest degree, and with this prime 
quality he also has great knowledge of the world, exceeding cun- 
ning, and a fluent and beguiling tongue. Jnit i\\cw qualities, 



80 CYMBELINE. 

enlisted in the infamous purpose he has in view, stand ridic- 
ulously impotent before the " divine Imogen." With great 
versatility, therefore, in adapting himself to circumstances and 
with that pliancy " to bend and form his mind to occasions and 
opportunities " (which is one of Bacon's principal precepts for the 
attainment of success, while at the same time he warns men not 
to pursue a losing game too far but " to sound a retreat rather 
than trust they shall conquer occasions by perseverance")^ 
Iachimo finding that audacity cannot carry the day, at once beats 
a retreat, and this he does with so much skill that he converts his 
defeat into the means of gaining an opportunity for practicing a 
stratagem whereby he may fraudulently win what he had in fair- 
ness lost. And in the pursuance of this latter design, his bold- 
ness, craft, and knowledge of men enable him so to arouse the 
passions and blind the judgment of Posthumus as to impose 
mere delusive proofs of Imogen's guilt upon him. 

From the foregoing instances, it is clear that the plot of this 
play is so constructed as to show characters in the pursuit of their 
fortunes and that the piece illustrates the spirit and, to some 
extent, the very letter of Bacon's doctrine on this branch of 
philosophy. Such an illustration is about all that can be looked 
for in a drama, inasmuch as the successful pursuit of fortune ac- 
cording to precept is for the most part a matter of time, whereas 
in a play sudden success is that only which can be well portrayed, 
and this latter is not so much the result of lawful precept as of 
that "corrupt and tainted prudence " which Bacon admits "is a 
short cut to fortune," though he adds "that it is in life as in 
ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest and muddiest and 
surely the fairer way is not much about." 

After setting forth his precepts, Bacon adds : " Nor am I so 
foolish as to assert that fortunes are not gained without all this 
contrivance which I have mentioned. For I know well they 
come tumbling into some men's laps and that others only obtain 
them by simple diligence and attention, using only a little cau- 
tion without any great or laborious art." 

And he passes this judgment on the whole subject, that "no 
man's fortune can be an end worthy of the gift of being that 
has been given him by God ; and often the worthiest men aban- 
don their fortunes willingly that they may have leisure for higher 
pursuits." De Aug. Book VIII. ch. 2. 



CYMBELINE. 81 

This is true of Imogen : she alone forms no plan for self- 
aggrandisement ; on the contrary she renounces her great for- 
tunes for the sake of her husband, and spends her life in 
rendering whatever good service may fall in her way. So deeply 
does she live in her moral nature, so little store does she set by 
that glitter of rank so much coveted by the world, that she relin- 
quishes the high station that interferes with her happiness, and 
wishes she were 

" A neat-herd's daughter ! and her Leonatus 
Her neighbor-shepherd's son ! " 

Yet she is borne on by the tide of events to success and all her 
heart's hopes. Her courage and her goodness carry her through, 
and she exemplifies the remarks of Bacon as well as the saying of 
Pisanio : — 

"Fortune brings in some boats that are not steer'd." 

This analysis could be carried much further ; but what has 
already been said will probably suffice to show 

That Cymbeline is a dramatic Chronicle-History, which inter- 
mingles the events of civil history with fable and romance ; and 
that in addition to this, it is, as far as its compass will allow, 
a Natural History of Sympathy and Antipathy in man, it being 
a collection of instances of various forms of love and hate, to- 
gether with certain secret instincts and sympathies dependent on 
the blood, which are phenomena of the kind that belong to the 
Natural History of Man. These feelings and sentiments being 
those by which men are prompted to action and by which they 
exercise their judgment in approval or disapproval of the motives 
of others, the play is history in its origin, its seeds, its essence. 
In Baconian language, it is history in its " form " or " formal 
cause." 

Moreover, the main subjects of the dialogue coincide to a re- 
markable extent with those peculiar and original subdivisions 
which Bacon makes of the Natural History, pointed out by him 
as the necessary foundation for philosophy ; the first of which or 
Generation is copiously represented by the notions of blood, 
birth, breeding, family, marriage, etc., out of which springs (lie 
whole movement of the plot. 

The second head or Praster- Generation finds a, parallel in 
the numerous instances of occult sympathies and antipathies, of 
(> 



82 CYMBELINE. 






dreams, divinations and other fabulous and superstitious matters, 
which fall in with the legendary and romantic cast of the piece, 
while to the third head of Arts or Mechanical or Experimental 
History may be referred the frequent mention of works, both of 
the mechanic and liberal arts, as well as the experiments of the 
Queen in drugs and poison. In fact, to push the analogy on 
moral grounds, to this class belong the trials, temptations, and 
experiences of the characters, particularly the trials by which 
the truth of Imogen is tested and also the fabrications and 
machinations resorted to by some of them to gain their purposes. 

Another close and remarkable parallelism is found in the ob- 
servance by the dramatist of that precept which Bacon lays down 
for the preparation of a Natural History, that all bodies be 
weighed, measured, and numbered, for in the play, the passions, 
sentiments, emotions, and thoughts are defined and described by 
weight, measure, and price. 

And still another precept of Bacon that in the compilation of 
Natural History all statements be plain and devoid of rhetorical 
ornament is reflected in passages that exemplify in a marked 
manner both the observance and the violation of the rule. 

The curiosity of Cymbeline moreover, expresses itself in a 
passage, which directly corresponds with Bacon's " topics of en- 
quiry " always appended by him to his histories. 

The business of History is to judge of men and their compara- 
tive worth and, therefore, the subject of the play involves the Art 
of Judging, This art treats of the nature of proofs. Proof may 
be either by experience or by testimony ; and the superiority of 
the first as a guide to the judgment, as well as the fallacious na- 
ture of the last, is exemplified in the incidents of the piece. The 
alleged guilt of Imogen is supported ouly by " signs " and " simu- 
lar proofs," whereas her innocence is maintained by direct ex- 
perience. The errors of judgment into which the characters 
fall — particularly Posthumus — are due to their relying upon 
testimony, that is, inferences from signs and probabilities rather 
than upon experience. In the drama, the judgment can be best 
represented as exercised with reference to men's characters and 
conduct ; and in Cymbeline men are known and judged and 
their worth estimated by being put to the proof. It is by trial 
that the natures of men are discovered, precisely as by test the 
properties of any material substance are discovered ; in all which 



, 



CYMBELINE. 83 

respects, it is evident that the play illustrates the same principles 
of judgment as those which are laid down by Bacon in The Art 
of Judging, and on which he builds his philosophy. 

Furthermore, in the last scene of the play, the various experi- 
ences of the different characters, which are scattered through the 
previous Acts, are collected and tabulated, so far as it can be 
done in the form of a dialogue, so that by the light mutually shed 
by them, the ends and purposes and consequently the inmost 
natures of the persons are made known, which is precisely coinci- 
dent with Bacon's method of forming of his facts a Table of 
Discovery, from which flows a true and legitimate . induction or 
form of judgment, which he calls " The Interpretation of Nature " 
and which, moreover, is that branch of the Art of Invention, that 
he terms the Invention of Arts. 

The only means of judging of men is by reading their natures 
as they are written in their words, looks, and gestures ; but such 
interpretation pertains to the Art of Tradition or the art of 
communicating knowledge and to that subdivision of such art 
which is called " the organ of discourse," which, says Bacon, 
"has more descendants besides words and letters," viz., gestures, 
looks and bodily expressions, and in fact, it might be said, acting 
of all kinds. This doctrine, which Bacon calls " the notes of 
things " is illustrated particularly in the gestures of Posthumus at 
his departure ; also in the simulation and dissimulation of Iachimo 
and the Queen ; in the scene in dumb show or pantomime ; in 
the attempt of Imogen to interpret the looks of Pisanio ; and in 
the free use throughout the play of signs, characters, tokens, and 
letters as signs significant and vehicles of thought and feeling. 

This method, moreover, of interpreting men is connected with 
another Baconian art, viz., " the art of rising in life," which de- 
pends upon a knowledge of men. As the play treats of the com- 
parative worth or rank of men, the fable of the piece places be- 
fore us characters striving to rise in the world and acquire place 
and distinction ; so that the plot and incidents illustrate Bacon's 
doctrine which he calls "the art of rising in life or making a 
man's fortune," or more generally the pursuit of success. Of 
this art the main precept is to acquire a knowledge of men, 
which, Bacon says, may be had from their words, their looks, 
their gestures, etc. This is obviously identical with the interpre- 
tation of " the notes and signs of things " above spoken of. 



84 CYMBELINE. 

And, lastly, the Art of Custody or " the helps to the memory " 
has an example in Iachimo's taking notes of Imogen's chamber ; 
which, though not peculiar of itself, has significance, when taken 
in connection with the other branches of the same philosophy, and 
particularly when it is considered that these notes were thus 
taken to be used as proofs. 

And all these various doctrines and arts are interwoven and 
blended together in one and the same action, constituting one 
entire whole, with a skill which calls to mind the silent and 
unobtrusive working of the creative forces of Nature which 
blend the manifold influences of divers elements in one organic 
product. 

From all which it appears that Cynibeline, as a work of art, is 
the development and embodiment of the idea of History, — which^ 
as Civil History, passes judgment on men and assigns them their 
rank according as their worth is proved by trial and experience, — 
and that this more general form wraps up also a Natural History 
made according to the plan laid down by Bacon for the formation 
of a history as a foundation for philosophy, that is, a collection of 
particulars arranged so that a true and legitimate induction can 
be made from them (of which there is a " visible representation " 
in the last scene of the piece,) and that consequently the play 
will serve as " an actual type and model, " which places before 
the eyes, as it were, the Baconian method of induction. 

The question arises, are the parallelisms, nay, the whole classes 
of parallelisms above set forth, accidental ? And is it accidental 
also that these classes of instances, which coincide with so many 
various connected branches of the same philosophy, should all be 
found in one and the same play ? Similitudes between two con- 
temporary authors are generally attributed to " the spirit of the 
age ; " but could the spirit of the age have stamped so deeply the 
same impress upon two great original minds as to render identical 
not merely the general scope and drift of their philosophy but 
also the scientific division and technical details of it? Are not, in 
short, these coincidences so numerous, pointed, special, coherent, 
and systematic that it would violate all the doctrine of chances to 
consider them casual ? But if on the other hand, they are inten- 
tional, then, inasmuch as these doctrines of Bacon, which are 
principally reflected in the play, were not revealed by him to the 
world at the time the play was written, it must follow that the 



CYMBELINE. 85 

dramatist had a knowledge of such doctrines with their peculiar 
subdivisions from the philosopher himself. This would imply a 
most intimate relation existing between Bacon and Shakespeare ; 
yet one of which their contemporaries apparently had no know- 
ledge and the nature of which must be left entirely to conjecture. 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 

INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

By the following analysis of The Winter's Tale it is intended to show 
that of the three leading divisions made by Bacon of Learning into His- 
tory, Poetry, and Philosophy, the play illustrates Poetry as an art and 
more particularly dramatic art as practiced by " Shake-speare." 

And that of the Logical Arts according to Bacon's division of them, it 
exemplifies the Art of Invention in that branch of it which treats of the 
Invention of Arguments. 

Also the Art of Judging in that branch of it which treats of proof and 
demonstration made by Syllogism, 

Also the Art of Transmission in that branch of it which treats of the 
ornament of discourse or Rhetoric. 

That it also gives examples of Civil Knowledge in that subdivision 
which is called the Art of Conversation or Wisdom of Behavior. 

Also in that subdivision called the Art of Business and particularly in 
that branch thereof called The Doctrine of Scattered Occasions or 
Counsel in Emergencies of Life. 

And, further, that the whole play exemplifies the use of the Deductive 
Logic on which were built the popular philosophies of the day, and which, 
however effective in sciences resting on opinion and words, was useless 
to advance true knowledge, as it left all new discoveries to be made by 
Time and Chance — vide De Aug. Book V. Cap. 2; also Nov. Or ff . 
Book I. Aph. 73. 

The Winter's Tale is therefore the opposite and counterpart of Cym- 
beline, in which is represented the Method of Induction according to 
Bacon. 






THE WINTER'S TALE. 

The Winter's Tale — as the title denotes — is a "feigned his- 
tory," a work of imagination. It looks upon life as an art of 
which the aim is to copy the beautiful. Itself a work of art, it 
also imitates a work of art ; in fact, it is in this imitation that its 
own art consists ; yet it is the one Shakespearian play that is in- 
variably pointed to as a proof of the rude method and lamentable 
ignorance of its writer generally ; but this opinion it is believed 
is so far from being correct, that, contrariwise, The Winter s 
Tale is a play which exemplifies with great beauty and in an ex- 
treme case the principles of art in general and of Shakespearian 
art in particular ; and that in it the poet proposed an end which 
required the greatest dramatic skill to execute and which nothing 
less than his complete mastery over his subject together with a 
practiced hand as a play-writer enabled him to attain. That end 
was the imitation of both the likeness and the difference involved 
in all imitative art. On the simultaneous perception of the like- 
ness of the copy to the original and yet its difference from it, the 
pleasure derived from the imitative arts seems to depend. 1 The 
likeness must not be so strong as to be thought a reality or the 
pleasure ceases, as may be seen in cases of disagreeable objects, 
of which, however, the imitation often gives pleasure ; while on 
the other hand, if the difference is too great, the imitation itself 
fails. But the idea of a winter's tale is that of an old rude story, 
devised for pastime among a rustic people to while away the long 
and stormy nights of winter ; and in such a work the difference 
arising from imperfect art will be quite as striking as any likeness 
it bears to reality. To imitate this feature, the poet gives to his 
play the style and character of the supposed narrator of The 
Winter s Tale. He makes his piece a narrative in dramatics form, 
in which the personages do not as in most of his plays speak their 
own sentiments and feelings in their own language, but are repre- 

1 "Les arts limitation," says Diderot, " sont toujours Ponded sur one hypotheses 

ce n'est pas le vrai qui nous oharme ; o'est Le mensonge approohani <le La venir Le 

plus pie's possible/ 1 



88 THE WINTER'S TALE. 






sented as they appear in and through the imagination of the nar- 
rator. The characters charm us by their truth, but still are tinged 
with a coloring not their own. Thus, in The Winter's Tale the 
dramatist not only imitates nature, but also art in its imitation 
of nature. To mingle touches of nature and art, to be true to life 
and at the same time discrepant from it, and to render such dis- 
crepancy a special beauty, — this double end the poet set before 
himself, and it will readily be acknowledged that nothing less 
than the most surpassing skill could accomplish it. 

By looking at the style and manner in which the story is told, 
a knowledge is gained of the main characteristics of the story- 
teller. Simple-minded, credulous, imaginative, and unlearned, the 
narrator is one who half believes the legend narrated; who, 
buried in rural seclusion, afar from the great world, knows no- 
thing of courts but from hearsay ; whose only knowledge of his- 
tory and geography has been derived from a little reading of 
romances, and to whom all things of note beyond the immediate 
and narrow horizon of an humble life are invested with an undue 
importance by the exaggerations of the imagination. To such a 
person, a king of Sicily or Bohemia is a mighty potentate, of ab- 
solute power and unbridled passions, who existed in some dim 
indefinite period of the past and who was surrounded with all that 
is rare and magnificent ; yet when depicted by this narrator, ne- 
cessarily, of manners, language and sentiments frequently not ris- 
ing in elegance or dignity above those of a coarse and illiterate 
country squire. So, too, the great lords and high officers of state, 
though exhibiting a certain elevation and refinement of mind, 
often drop back into a bluntness of speech and deportment, which 
hints as much, if not more, familiarity on their part with the cus- 
toms and manners of a yeoman's life than with the ceremonies 
and usages of a court. Their diction, their metaphors, and most 
of their illustrations are drawn from rural life and occupations, 
and throughout the play, elegant as are some of the scenes and 
particularly the last, there is scarce an allusion that might not 
naturally fall within the scope of a rustic's knowledge. In brief, 
an undue exaggeration of things unknown, because idealized by 
the imagination, but painted and described in the homely style 
and phraseology natural to one of limited experience, is a promi- 
nent characteristic. of The Winter's Tale. Hence, too, the many 
provincialisms in language, and the manifold blunders, so called, 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 89 

in geography and history, together with the extraordinary confu- 
sion of customs and manners that prevails throughout the play — 
all are attributable to the artless character and imperfect know- 
ledge of the narrator of the story. The famous blunder of giving 
to Bohemia a sea-coast, which has been harped on from the days 
of Ben Jonson to the present time, is in fact a stroke of art. We 
are generally told that the apparent ignorance exhibited in this 
play is the fault of Greene, the author of "Paredosto," and that 
the poet, in dramatizing Greene's novel, did not stop to correct 
the mistakes and absurdities he met with ; but it so happens that 
most of the best " blunders " are of his own invention, but few 
comparatively having been taken from Greene. The Bohemian 
seaport and the transfer of Delphi to an island are from the novel, 
and they are good as far as they go ; but they by no means suf- 
ficed for the play- writer's purpose of giving the requisite tone and 
coloring to his piece. He was writing an old and marvelous 
winter's tale, and so far from wishing to display " skill in the 
science of geography," he throws all precise knowledge to the 
winds. His chief care is to appear ignorant, and he therefore 
brings in a pagan shepherdess who speaks of " Whitsun pastorals," 
and pagan clowns who talk of " a bearing cloth for a squire's 
child" and "Christian burial " and " boors and franklins" and 
" a Puritan who sings psalms to hornpipes," together with many 
other absurdities and inconsistencies ; and in conclusion he caps 
the climax of anachronism by showing us a statue of Giulio 
Romano, and all this in the days of the Delphic oracle. And as an 
instance of how careful he was to paint in his effects, it is worthy 
of remark that finding in the novel mention made of " the Em- 
peror of Russia " as father of the queen of Egistus (Polixenes) — 
a queen who appears neither in the novel nor the play — and un- 
willing to lose so fine an anachronism and one so well suited to 
his purpose, he adopts it and puts it into the mouth of Hermione 
(queen of Leontes) on occasion of her trial. Here then is an 
absurdity not owing to a blind adherence to the novel, but to a 
voluntary departure from it. 

The first scene of Act III. between Cleomenes and Dion, who 
have but just returned from Delphi, is a good instance oi the 
poet's mode of handling his subject. This scone contains a de- 
scription of the oracle and of the awe inspired by its response. 
The style is, therefore, heightened to correspond with the dignity 



90 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

of the subject, whilst the character of the narrator of The Win- 
ter s Tale is still kept in view by the geographical mistake of 
transferring the seat of the oracle to an island, but more particu- 
larly by the extravagant tone of the description which indicates 
the simple-minded wonder this far-away and marvelous place ex- 
cited in the imagination. 

When the scene is carried from the Court to the country and 
the play becomes pastoral, the narrator is more at home. Still 
all is ideal. Perdita and Doricles are patterns of extra purity and 
trust, the clowns are more simple than simpletons, and Autolycus 
more roguish than rogues usually are. 

A good specimen of this extravagance of style that proceeds 
from a heated imagination, and is therefore akin to poetic enthu- 
siasm, may be found in the account given of the opening of the 
fardel and of the astonishment of the two kings and their retinues 
at the discovery of Perdita's birth and parentage : " They seemed 
almost with staring on one another to tear the cases of their eyes ; 
there was speech in their dumbness, language in their very ges- 
tures ; they looked as they had heard of a icorld ransomed or 
one destroy 9 d" etc. 

With marvelous art, too, is the character of Perdita drawn, 
— a shepherdess, with a nimbus of classic grace ; a rustic of in- 
born dignity and elegance, yet touched in the portrayal with just 
enough of consciousness to betray the fact that she is the mouth- 
piece of one who intends her for an ideal of naivete and innocence, 
but who a little overcharges the picture. All the sentiments she 
utters are perfectly true to nature, but some of them are such as 
in the presence of strangers and on a public occasion would be 
repressed by maiden shame, and indeed hardly whispered to her 
own heart : we perceive the narrator in the fact that she utters 
them. 

In like manner, the abrupt transitions of feeling — specially 
instanced in Leontes' jealousy — may be accounted for. The 
passion, though in its nature spontaneous, does not begin with 
slight suspicions and work itself to a climax, as would have been 
natural in one whose manner and words just before had been so 
affectionate to his wife and friend ; but inasmuch as he is, in 
some measure, the figure through which the narrator speaks, he is 
represented as under the influence of a passion that springs sud- 
denly into life full-grown. It is as if we were told, " Now Leontes 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 91 

became jealous/' But then this passion is depicted with amazing 
truth and power (and coarse in itself is rendered somewhat more 
coarse by the supposed want of refinement in the imagination 
whence the story proceeds), and at the end subsides and disap- 
pears as abruptly as it arose. 

Equally felicitous in the execution of this dramatic Winter's 
Tale is the blending of the dramatic and the narrative. The 
whole play is a tale and is filled with word painting. Not to 
speak of such obvious passages as Antigonus' account of the vision 
that appears to him, or Autolycus' description of the clowns he 
entranced with his songs, or of the narration of the opening of 
the fardel, or of the picture the old Shepherd draws of his house- 
wife, the dialogue is rendered descriptive and each character has 
some relation to make of the others. What can be more vivid 
than Leontes' rehearsal of the signs of illicit love he pretends to 
have witnessed between Hermione and Polixenes ? How sweetly 
does Florizel describe Perdita's speaking and singing and dan- 
cing ? What a miniature finish is given to Paulina's portrayal 
of the new-born babe and its resemblance to its father ! How 
picturesque is the Clown's account of the storm that wrecks the 
vessel of Antigonus, couched though it be in language and figures 
characteristically low and undignified ! How fine on the other 
hand is Cleomenes' and Dion's sketch of Delphi and the oracle ! 
In the last scene, the amazement of Leontes and the others is 
made to express itself in such manner as to describe the appear- 
ance of the Statue ; and to descend to minuter particulars (if it be 
not to put too fine a point upon it), mark the use of descriptive 
epithets in a way natural to one narrating the events but not 
usual in characters speaking for themselves, as in this of Paulina : 

"If I prove honey mouth'd, let my tongue blister 
And never to my red-look? d anger be 
The trumpet any more." 

The epithet " red-look'd " applied by Paulina to her own anger 
is not dramatic, but descriptive of a phase in her own appearance 
not obvious to herself but of which notice would naturally be 
taken by one painting her passion. 

The novel on which the play is founded is thus entitled : — 

"Pandosto, The Triumph of Time, wherein is discovered by a 

pleasant history that although by the means of sinister fortune 

Truth may be concealed, yet by Time in spight of Fortune, it is 

most manifestly revealed . . . Temporis Jilia Veritas. 



92 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

In this title are found both the moral and philosophical purport 
of the play. With respect to the latter, it will suffice at present 
to say that the adage, " Truth is the daughter of time," directly 
refers to that condition of human knowledge so much deplored by 
Bacon as the result of the old philosophies, which, being based 
upon words and syllogisms, were powerless in the investigation of 
nature and left all useful discoveries to Chance and Time. 

But on the moral side, it is Man in his relations to Time, through 
whose mutations the truth is revealed, guilt exposed, calumny 
refuted, and reputations vindicated, that the poet purposes to repre- 
sent. Time stands as agent for retributive justice, and, as such, 
becomes the moral background of the piece. The whole play is 
consequently written over with passages indicating the lapse of 
time, ranging from " an eternity " to " a wink of the eye," with 
contrasts between youth and age, birth and death, and frequent 
allusions to periods of life and seasons of the year. The char- 
acters dwell upon reminiscences that compare the present with 
the past, or they anticipate with joy or fear the contingencies of 
the future. In addition, the notions of breeding, growth, heirdom, 
succession, and also those of chance, change, and alteration are 
continually presented ; and so familiarized does the mind become 
with the frequent mention made of intervals and periods of time 
that the intervention of sixteen years between the third and 
fourth acts falls in harmoniously with this general impression 
made of time's flight and its necessary connection with the growth 
and issue of human affairs ; so that the imagination is enabled to 
embrace readily in one view and draw into unity a series of events 
spread over many years. The theory of this play-writer evidently 
was (as his practice proves) that dramatic time — like the drama 
itself — is purely ideal and belongs to the domain of the imagina- 
tion, and consequently it can be lengthened or shortened at pleas- 
ure, provided the imagination has any foothold to stand upon ; 
therefore any series of events that is ideally connected is capa- 
ble of dramatic sequence ; even in actual life in cases where the 
relation of cause and effect is perceived, time drops off as an un- 
essential circumstance. In The Winter s Tale the idea of the 
piece requires that a long lapse of time shall be brought into view 
that the truth that lies at the bottom of the piece may receive a 
full and adequate illustration. Violation of the so-called unity of 
time is essential to the effective execution of the design of the 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 93 

piece, as is the case in Cymbeline with regard to the violation of 
the unity of place. ■ 

But The Winter's Tale has been condemned as a work of art 
by critics of the highest name on account of its utter disregard of 
the unities of place and time, and certainly if these mechanical 
unities are essential to the production of a dramatic whole the 
piece is open to such censure. The scene is laid partly in Sicily 
and partly in Bohemia, and the poet creates the impression that 
these places are immensely remote from each other ; he introduces 
a gap of sixteen years between the third and fourth acts ; and 
as for the unity of action, the play is made up of two plays, 
each having its own action, its own heroine, and its own set of 
subordinate characters. The first three acts, of which the scene 
is laid in Sicily and which are serious, not to say tragic, in tone, 
are taken up with the accusation, trial, and apparent death of 
Hermione ; the fourth act is an idyllic comedy, which presents 
a sheep-shearing festival in Bohemia, and is occupied with the 
loves of Florizel and Perdita and the rogueries of Autolycus ; 
but in the fifth act, this pair of plays is welded together and 
unity of interest given to their widely contrasted actions by the 
discovery of the parentage of Perdita and the consequent reap- 
pearance of Hermione, the reconciliation of the two kings, the 
reunion of Hermione and Leontes, the marriage of the two young 
lovers and also of Paulina and Camillo, whereby each of the pairs 
that had been estranged and separated are reunited and the play 
ends with the general accord of all parties. 

This disregard of critical canons may, no doubt, be set down 
among those features of the play which are introduced for the 
purpose of imitating the artlessness and imperfections of a win- 
ter's tale, but in that case, if no deeper principle of unity can be 
found in the comedy, it will prove really as rude as the tale it 
imitates. Besides, it should be observed that the dramatist, 
instead of smoothing the way by some rhetorical artifice, as he 
often does in other plays, for the reception by the imagination of 
these gaps in time and space, takes pains to exaggerate them : 
they enter into his plan. It would seem then that finding in 
Pandosto a fable such as suited his purpose, yet one which 
violates all the formal unities, he seized on this feature of the 
story and converted it into a positive beauty by making it 
characteristic of the rude art he imitates, while at the same time 



94 THE WINTER'S TALE. 



bv 



he uses it as a foil to render more conspicuous his own method by 
which he infuses unity into the most refractory materials and 
reduces them to an aesthetic whole. 

However regardless of ordinary dramatic rules this writer may 
have been, he never neglected the two essential qualities of a 
work of imitative art, — that is, likeness or truth to nature in the 
parts and the union or combination of the parts in one whole! 
Of such a work, the simplest type is one of two parts or a pair 
of things or persons, as a pair of friends or of lovers, of which 
the parts, though dissimilar and disunited, are bound in unity 
by a moral tie and are therefore typical of any organic whole in 
which the parts being reciprocally related, are integrated by a 
principle of union. Of such a pair, we find a description in the 
play. 

" Sicilia cannot show himself over-kind to Bohemia. They were train'd 
together in their childhoods and there rooted betwixt them then such an affec- 
tion which cannot choose but branch now. Since their more mature dignities 
and royal necessities made separation of their society, their encounters, though 
not personal, have been royally attorneyed with interchange of gifts, letters, 
loving embassies, that they have seemed to he together, though absent, shook hands 
as over a vast, and embraced, as it were, from the ends of opposed winds. The 
heavens continue their loves ! " Act I. Sc. 1. 

This forcible and significant picture of a pair of friends, who, 
notwithstanding the widest possible personal separation, still 
seem to be together and are held in union by the continuance of 
their loves, is an excellent analogon or type (were one wanted) of 
a work of Shakespearian art ; for such a work disregards inter- 
vals of space and time, provided its parts are held in unity by a 
moral bond. And in fact, as the poet, whose purpose it seems to 
have been to give dramatic embodiment to the ideas that underlie 
the relations necessarily incident to human nature, he aimed at 
the representation of human life as influenced by principles of 
which the operation frequently could not be developed within any 
narrow compass of space and time. As in this play, for example, 
which represents Man in relation to time as the discoverer of 
truth, it is essential to the full development of this conception 
that a long flight of years shall be imagined to have passed within 
the time of the play, and therefore the dramatist, so far from 
seeking to preserve the unity of time or to keep the action of the 
piece " within one revolution of the sun," fills our imaginations 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 95 

with a sense of the lapse of time and expands the brief period of 
representation into a long tract of years. 

But if The Winter's Tale be a work which may be taken as a 
model to exemplify in an extreme case the Shakespearian method, 
the principles of such method must necessarily be deducible from 
it; and upon looking into it, it will be found, it is believed, that 
the following characteristics are demanded in a complete Shake- 
spearian tragedy or comedy. 

First, it must be founded on an idea having both an artistic 
and a moral side : as an artistic idea, it will be one which under- 
lies some special form of writing, literary or scientific, while on 
its moral side, it will furnish the standard of judgment in that 
sphere of thought and sympathy, of which the " literary form " — 
and, by consequence, the play — is an expression. For instance, 
in this play, the artistic idea is that of a " winter's tale," which, 
as a work of imitative art, copies the beautiful and demands that 
the play shall possess the spirit and features of such a work, while 
morally, the beau ideal (in character) is the standard of judg- 
ment when life is viewed as an art ; or to take the case of 
Cymbeline, wdiich adopts as its law " the form " of History or 
judgment on the comparative merits of men as tested by actual 
proof; as an artistic idea, this law renders the play a living 
History in which the characters judge of the comparative worth 
of men as proved by experience, but in framing these judgments, 
they take as a moral standard that measure of excellence which 
experience has taught each man of his own and others' capabilities. 
The idea of a play when fully embodied in a character (as that of 
Cymbeline is embodied in Imogen) is an ideal and the Shake- 
spearian drama furnishes a gallery of ideals that exhaust the most 
important relations of life. Just as Shakespeare's characters are 
not individuals only, but types of classes, so his fables are not 
simply stories concerning the fortunes of this or that personage, 
but embrace some wide and special domain of thought ana ac- 
tion. The moral idea of a play is the main source of its unity, for 
the characters, however varied and separated by events, are all 
related to this idea, some being full impersonations of it, as many 
of the heroines ; others being its direct negative, which produces 
characters like Iago, Goneril, Regan, The Weird Sisters, and 
others, while others, again, represent partial and different shades 
of character arising from the struggle of the good and evil prinoi- 



96 THE WINTER'S TALE. 






pies in men's natures, as is particularly instanced in the great 
tragic heroes. In The Winter s Tale, the moral idea, stated in 
the briefest terms, is " the good and fair " which has its most 
ordinary and practical form in the sentiment and principle of 
Honor; and it can be readily seen how characters having no 
dramatic connection in the action of the play and utterly unlike 
each other, as for instance, Mamillius and Autolycus, can be 
combined in one effect ; Mamillius having so exquisite a sense 
of honor that he dies of shame at his mother's disgrace, whilst 
Autolycus is ashamed of nothing but of doing a creditable action ; 
so that these parts may be said to illustrate the positive and 
negative poles of the same principle. 

A second requisite for a Shakespearian play deducible f rom this 
comedy is that its action and dialogue be so constructed as to ex- 
emplify some philosophical doctrine or branch of learning. 

All the institutions of man are, of course, but the outgrowth 
of his nature ; and in the pursuit of his ends either for the grati- 
fication of his desires, or the supply of his wants, he makes use of 
means and methods, which, when digested into rules, become the 
various arts of life, as, for example, his love of order gives rise 
to the State and the art of government ; his desire for safety to 
physiology and the medical art; his love of pleasure and the in- 
dulgence of the fancy to the drama and the dramatic art, also to 
works of fiction and the laws of taste ; the desire to convince and 
persuade to logic and rhetoric ; his love of beauty to the fine arts 
and aesthetics ; his love of honor to courtesy, fine manners, and 
rules of decorum ; and so on through the whole circle of senti- 
ments, desires, and appetites. As Bacon says, " Nothing can be 
found in the material globe which has not its correspondent in the 
crystalline globe — the understanding; or that there is nothing 
to be found in practice which has not its particular doctrine or 
theory T And the dramatist was evidently of the same way of 
thinking, for he always incorporates into his play, and so illus- 
trates, the leading principles of that doctrine or science or art 
that results from the working of those feelings and faculties and 
the pursuit of those ends which are represented in the piece. 
This coincidence of the philosophical with the moral significance 
of the play imparts great depth and unity to the piece. And a 
play is a philosophical parable as well as an amusing poem and 
an instructive lesson in life. 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 97 

A third requisite of the Shakespearian method as taught us by 
The Winter's Tale is that a play must possess its own distinct 
rhetoric specially adapted to its subject ; that all which constitutes 
manner and style, cast of thought, modes of expression, forms of 
phrases, classes of imagery and metaphors, choice of words, must 
be consonant with the leading theme of the piece and in fact be 
shaped and dictated by it ; so that the two opposite conceptions 
involved in the observance and the infraction of the moral rule 
that underlies the action, shall be constantly repeated and made 
to pulsate, as it were, throughout the play. 

But, further, if The Winter's Tale be really such an exemplar 
of Shakespearian art as is here supposed, then it must possess all 
these requisites in their most general form ; it must not only pos- 
sess a special rhetoric peculiar to itself but must illustrate the art 
of rhetoric ; it must not only rest on an idea that is artistic, but 
such idea must be the idea of a work of art generally, and on its 
moral side must be inclusive of all others and furnish a ground ^ 
well for the first three acts, which are ennobled by the dignity of 
Hermione, as for the fourth act, which is beautified by the grace 
of Perdita, and at the same time be a sufficient rule for the fine 
courtesy and elegance of the closing scenes of the piece ; while 
the philosophy of the play, instead of being confined to some 
special doctrine of civil knowledge, must present the general prin- 
ciples of that philosophy which considers Man in Society. 

To make this clear, it will be necessary to set forth that view 
of life with its special principles that constitutes the moral scheme 
or platform of the piece, which is none other than its idea writ 
large. To do this will enable us to account for the tone and col- 
oring — the moral atmosphere, so to speak — of the play, and will 
unfold those conceptions which are embodied in the characters 
and are exemplified in their actions and manners. 

Ordinarily, the fundamental principles of a Shakespearian play 
are so familiar in their application and so close to us in daily use 
that we never think of analyzing them ; the following, how ever, 
seem to furnish the moral basis of The Winters Tide. 

The power of Time to reveal the truth is made practical and 
effective chiefly through Speech. Without language, Society, if 
it could exist at all, would have neither a past nor a future: all 
transmission of intelligence would cease, the knowledge of every 
man would die with him, and the intellectual progress oi' the world 
7 



98 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

be ended. Neither in such case could there be public opinion nor 
private reputation, the sentiment of honor would be unknown and 
the voice of calumny — a blessed compensation ! — would be hushed 
forever. Among the uses of speech stand foremost persuasion 
and instruction. To attain our ends, we beg, entreat, pray, ad- 
jure, promise, in fine, use all means of persuasion ; or to benefit 
others, we give instruction or counsel, which last is the most val- 
uable service and the most sacred trust between man and man. 
Counsel is the soul of business and no important step in life can 
be safely taken without it. To give or to receive wise counsel, 
and thereby remove in others or ourselves the troubles of the 
heart or the perplexities of business, is one of the honorablest of- 
fices and rarest fruits of friendship. Thus Bacon says : " No re- 
ceipt openeth the heart like a true friend to whom you may im- 
part griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatever 
lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or con- 
fession ; " and in the same spirit Leontes says to his counselor, 
Camillo : — 

" I have trusted thee, Camillo ; 
With all the near'st things to my heart, as well 
My chamber-councils : wherein, priest-like, those 
Hast cleans' d my bosom; I from thee departed 
Thy penitent reformed" 

Both persuasion and instruction, which in their various forms 
have a range from the lispings of the child to the oratory of the 
senate-house, may be comprised under the head of the communi- 
cation of knowledge. There are two sources of knowledge : ex- 
perience and testimony. The facts of which any one individual 
has certain knowledge are only those which fall under his own 
observation and form but an infinitesimal portion of the great 
mass that makes up the whole truth ; all else to him is but opin- 
ion, that is, probability or likelihood supported by testimony. In 
the most trivial as in the most important matters, trust must be 
placed in the sayings and information of others, that is, in testi- 
mony, and the sum of the knowledge possessed by any commu- 
nity is the result of the incessant interchange of intelligence be- 
tween its individual members as eye-and-ear witnesses. Every 
man, however limited his sphere of action, can contribute some 
knowledge, whereby he may often, unwittingly, supply a neces- 
sary link in a chain of proof, as for instance, the old Shepherd 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 99 

in the play communicates facts known only to himself, which 
establish the royal birth of Perdita ; and thus through the end- 
less intermingling of human affairs — " the infinite doings of the 
world " — facts of the greatest moment which have been lost for 
years to view and which lie entirely beyond the reach of systematic 
inquiry are frequently brought to light by what is called Time 
and Chance. 

The conception of Time, therefore, as the revealer of truth is 
resolved into the concurrent or equivalent conception that Speech 
is testimony and consequently the foundation of belief, per sua- 
sion, and opinion among men. This practically carries forward 
the movement of the plot : all and each of the characters are 
attempting to prove some point or impress some belief or opinion 
upon others of what they have witnessed or what they assert to be 
true. Evidence, both direct and secondary ; simple statements 
depending on the veracity of the speaker, vehement assertions, 
protestations, declarations under oath, adjurations, formal attesta- 
tions, circumstantial evidence, and the infallible oracles of the 
Gods — all are illustrated. Even trial by combat is alluded to. 
Corresponding with these different degrees of proof, assent is 
exemplified throughout its different grades from belief in the prog- 
nostications of a dream up to an implicit faith in divine revela- 
tion. The world, as viewed in this fantastic legend, is but a 
witness-stand where every man is telling his tale and giving testi- 
mony to some fact having pertinency, near or remote, to those 
issues made up for purposes of retributive justice between Divine 
Power and erring Humanity. 

Testimony commands our belief in proportion to the veracity 
of the speaker and its likelihood or likeness to what we know to 
be true. But even where the witness is honest, there are so 
many errors of the sense and judgment, to say nothing of perver- 
sions by prejudice, interest, and passion, that in a great majority 
of instances the conclusions derived from this source are mere 
opinion or conjecture. In fact, all knowledge, unless it be 
grounded on experience, is theory, and the common opinions of 
men are almost wholly so. "You shall find all men," says 
Berkeley, " full of opinions, but knowledge only in a few. A sim- 
ple apprehension of conclusions as taken in themselves without 
the deductions of science is what falls to the share of mankind in 
general. Religion and the precepts of parents and masters, the 



100 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

wisdom of legislators and the accumulated experience of ages 
supply the place of proofs and reasoning with the vulgar of all 
ages." 

All counsel and advice are asked and given upon the supposi- 
tion that opinion is a sufficient guide to the judgment ; but how 
far opinions — derived too often from loose and inadequate experi- 
ence — differ from true knowledge, is exemplified in the prover- 
bial disagreement of the most learned pundits and doctors. 

As the aim of speech is to persuade and win belief, honesty is 
its indispensable requisite. The rule is thus stated in the play 
by Archidamus : " Believe me, I speak as mine understanding 
instructs me and mine honesty puts it to utterance." From the 
sturdy stock honesty springs the bright flower Honor, which is 
the esteem and favorable opinion that attend on Veracity, and 
a regard for truth. This esteem, when expressed in speech, 
becomes good name and reputation, the loss of which the honor- 
able man considers the greatest calamity of life. Thus Polyxenes, 
accused of the grossest dishonor, invokes as his greatest punish- 
ment, — 

" O then my best blood turn 

To an infected jelly ; and my name 

Be yok'd with his that did betray the Best ! 

Turn then my freshest reputation to 

A savour that may strike the dullest nostril 

Where I arrive and my approach be shunn'd, 

ISTay, hated too, worse than the greatest infection 

That e'er was heard or read" 

Act I. Sc. 2. 

Moral differences among men give rise to a scale of merit 
and the establishment of rank, which is the outward symbol of 
honor. And rank being inheritable, honor attaches to family 
and birth and is therefore especially looked for as a principle of 
conduct in the gentry or that class, which on account of its refine- 
ment and elegance derived from breeding and culture, has been 
styled "the Corinthian capital of Society." Among this class 
flourishes (theoretically) in its highest state the sentiment of 
honor or pride of character, a lofty self-respect, which disdains 
whatever is unhandsome or base. This sentiment renders men 
keenly sensitive to all that touches good name and inspires a 
quick sympathy in this regard with the wrongs of others. To 
this feeling in Camillo, Polyxenes appeals. 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 101 

"Camillo, 
As you are certainly a gentleman, thereto 
Clerk-like, experienced, which no less adorns 
Our gentry, than our parents' noble names 
In whose success we are gentle, — I beseech you 
If you know aught which does behove my knowledge 
Thereof to be inform'd imprison it not 
In ignorant concealment." 

Act I. Sc. 2. 

Virtue being the condition of rank or the tenure by which high 
station is held, all true nobility rests upon it. Without this 
attribute, neither king nor noble is entitled to the higher appella- 
tion of gentleman. And inasmuch as it is goodness that wins 
admiration, so it is the highest goodness, the supreme model or 
idea of good that wins the highest admiration and is the pattern 
of the man of honor. By copying this exemplar man is ennobled, 
and grace and dignity imparted to life. This, too, possesses that 
divine beauty which has shed a lustre on the true gentlemen and 
heroes of all ages, and which it has ever been the aim of the 
artist and the poet, particularly the dramatic poet, to embody ; 
the one in form and color ; the other, in mimic life and action. 
This standard of truth and goodness, this rule of grace and 
beauty, — for truth and goodness and beauty are but different 
aspects of the Best, — comprises as well the grand and severe 
virtues that confer dignity on character as the minor morals and 
proprieties, which give gracefulness to manners and render con- 
duct becoming. 

Of characters in which dignity and grace are blended we have 
examples in Hermione and Perdita ; in Hermione grace being 
subordinated to dignity, while in Perdita dignity is subordinated 
to grace. 

The moral ideal, when carried to its highest pitch, becomes 
that " beauty of holiness " that belongs to the Divine Exemplar, 
and which is alluded to in the play as the " Best." 



" My name 
Be yok'd with his that did betray the Best." 

Act I. Sc. 2. 



by art, exists in the mind alone ; it cannot be made by selections 
of what actually exists in nature. To one asking Raffaelle where 
he found those forms of beauty with which he enriched his can- 



102 THE WINTER'S TALE. 



.. 



vas, he replied that "they were ideals that sprung up in his 
mind." * So Bacon says : " A man cannot tell whether Apelles or 
Albert Diirer were the more triflers, whereof the one would make 
a personage by geometric proportion ; the other by taking the 
best parts out of divers faces to make one excellent" A similar 
doctrine is found in the play, transferring only to moral beauty 
what Bacon says of physical, for Hermione, who stands for an 
ideal of goodness, is thus compared with the excellence of natural 
life : — 

" If one by one you wedded all the world 
Or, from the all that are took something good 
To make a perfect woman, she (Hermione) 
Would be unparallel'd." 

Act V. Sc. 1. 

The ideal of virtue and beauty of conduct is not the same in all 
minds ; it will vary according to the knowledge and sensibility of 
him who forms it ; it will be most exalted and refined in the wis- 
est and best ; and as these hold, theoretically, the first rank, we 
must look for the highest standard and the brightest examples of 
honor and courtesy to the class of gentlemen at the head of which 
stands the king, who therefore should be the pattern of all noble- 
ness and gracefulness both in morals and in manners. This truth 
Leontes expresses, when conscious that his actions are taken for 
the rule, he says to Hermione who is supposed by him to be guilty 
of the grossest dishonor : — 

" O thou thing 

Which I '11 not call a creature of thy place 

Lest barbarism, making me the precedent 

Should a like language use to all degrees 

And mannerly distiuguishment leave out 

Betwixt the prince and beggar." 

Act II. Sc. 1. 

In the affairs of life the one unavoidable topic of speech is 
character. In all dealings, men's motives and actions are neces- 
sarily implicated and made the theme of discussion. Every man 
is subject to moral criticism and is praised or blamed, accused or 
defended, held in honor or contempt, according to the moral 
quality of his words and conduct. In passing judgment on men, 
we have two standards, of one or the other of which we make use 
according to circumstances. One of these standards is what we 

1 " Mi servo di certa idea clie mi viene alia mente." 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 103 

snow of men from our own experience ; the other is the ideal of 
luman perfection. In Cymbeline, which gives a view of practi- 
cal life, we have man as a subject of natural history, of whose 
nature or qualities we gain knowledge by trial and experience ; 
man as we know him in our daily walks ; mortal man, subject to 
birth, growth, sickness, hunger, pain, death, and we may add, 
burial. In Cymbeline, therefore, men are represented as judging 
of each other by direct and positive evidence, derived from actual 
test and personal observation ; and the standard assumed is that 
common grade of excellence, which we learn from experience pre- 
vails among men, and above or below which as they rise or sink, 
are they praised or blamed. Moreover, in Cymbeline men are 
compared with each other with a view of determining their rank 
or relative place. 

In The Winter's Tale, which is an imaginary story or life at 
second-hand, the poet with the nicest propriety treats of those 
judgments of men's motives and actions, which in the absence of 
direct proof, are founded upon hearsay or reputation, that is, upon 
testimony. These judgments, although all men are exposed to 
them, are necessarily more frequently called out by the more re- 
markable examples, whether of good or evil, which society fur- 
nishes, and also by the distinguished characters of history and 
fiction. But in judging of men's reputations, that is, of the opin- 
ions and speeches of other men about them (which is but the 
weighing of evidence) we must rely for determining the truth 
upon inferences and reasoning from signs and probabilities ; and 
our standard of judgment is no longer confined to our own nar- 
row observation and experience, particularly in the case of emi- 
nent and illustrious personages or the characters of history and 
fiction, but is that ideal which is formed of the mind's conceptions 
of possible excellence ; derived, in some measure, no doubt, from 
all we have heard or read of what is best in human nature, yet in 
the main created by the imagination. And in The Winter s Tale, 
unlike Cymbeline, men are not compared with a view of establish- 
ing their relative place, but the question is, how good is a man of 
his kind ? how much honor or how high a reputation does he de- 
serve? how near does he come to the ideal? 

It is obvious that this beau ideal or rule of goodness and grace 
is not a constant measure for all men, inasmuch as manners that 
are suitable for one class are quite unbecoming in another, and 



T 



104 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

that which is graceful conduct will vary with time, place, age, sex,. 
and condition. Each class has its own standard of what is best, 
and this will explain the frequent use of phrases in the play, sig- 
nifying what is especially graceful and decorous under given cir- 
cumstances, as for instance — 

" A father 

Is at the nuptials of his son, a guest 

That best becomes the table." 

" I '11 point you where you shall have such receiving 

As shall become your highness" 

" She shall be habited as becomes 
The partner of your bed." 

" Black brows, they say, become some women best." 

" The office becomes a woman best." 

"As might become a lady like me" — 

and others which refer to what is fit and becoming in particular 
instances as distinguished from any general rule. 

In its weight as testimony, good name has a practical value be- 
yond any gratification of pride it may occasion ; for character is 
a fact which goes far to prove the truth of whatever its possessor 
asserts, while it also in a great degree tests the probability of what- 
ever is asserted concerning him. Reports affecting character, par- 
ticularly if they be damaging ones, fly, like an infection, from 
mouth to mouth and are believed and circulated without any 
proof whatever. Slander and scandal are rife in every society, 
against which there is no defense unless it be in a perfect integ- 
rity of life. Such a life is all of a piece ; like a perfect work of 
art, it is a well-rounded whole, " totus, teres atque rotandus" 
Every part is consistent with the whole ; and the whole, as an 
integral part, is consistent with all truth. Calumny, therefore, 
in the long run, as time and circumstances work to develop the 
truth, will be powerless against it. 

But the man of honor, besides being watchful of his own repu- 
tation, is exceedingly tender of that of others. He recognizes 
the duty of grounding beliefs and opinions affecting character 
upon sufficient knowledge, and shrinks from harboring suspicions, 
much more from preferring accusations, except upon the most un- 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 105 

questionable evidence. With him, veracity is all in all, and it is 
essential to veracity that the observations of the senses, which 
furnish the materials of knowledge, should be interpreted without 
bias or coloring from passion or interest. This rule is constantly 
violated by the envies and jealousies that infest Society and use 
detraction as an habitual weapon ; but its grossest infraction 
springs from a frame of mind constitutionally suspicious, which, 
when stimulated by sexual love and the apparent preference of a 
rival, is capable of every baseness, falsehood, cruelty, meanness, 
and revenge. This vile passion claims for its own imaginings all 
the credit due to facts, and while looking through a jaundiced 
medium that discolors all objects of its sense, arrogates to itself 
an infallible discernment and knowledge of the world. But these 
gross and silly phantoms of the brain are in the end exposed by 
Time through the discovery of new proofs, whilst the community 
in order to protect itself from defamation and the circulation of 
false intelligence visits the slanderer and the liar with the deepest 
contempt and shame. 

The foregoing seem to be the main points or among the main 
points in the moral scheme of the piece ; they are an expansion 
of the idea that life is an art of which the aim is to copy the 
Beautiful, and may be summarized thus : — 

Time is resolvable into Speech, as it is through Speech or the 
constant interchange of intelligence between men, as time runs 
on, that the truth is brought to light. But to Speech Veracity is 
essential, most especially in matters of opinion affecting character, 
that is, reputation, inasmuch as an honorable name is considered 
as the most valuable possession of man, and as such, awakens a 
desire which is one of the strongest of the human heart. This 
desire leads to the ordering of life on the highest plane as the 
means of obtaining Honor and Reputation, or in other words, it 
leads to the beautiful in conduct and sentiment, of which the 
highest type is the moral ideal and the imitation of this is the 
aim of life, viewed as an art. 

The play is, therefore, cast into a sphere of life, of which the 
guiding principle is Honor, or the standard of the beautiful in 
character and action. 

It should be noted, however, that opinions touching good name 
and reputation are necessarily inherent in human society, yet 
there are none on which men's minds are more widely divergent, 



106 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

or which call more strongly for evidence and argument, as means 
of accusation and defense, of praise and blame ; and that these 
means, being reduced to rule, form the art of rhetoric. 

The characters are drawn with great simplicity, Leontes being 
the only one at all complex and that only by reason of the shift- 
ing lights and shades of jealousy with which he is portrayed. O 
this character, Mrs. Jameson remarks, " Leontes on slight grounds 
suspects his queen of infidelity with his friend Polyxenes, king of 
Bohemia ; the suspicion once admitted, and working in a jealous, 
passionate, and vindictive nature, becomes a settled and confirmed 
opinion." 

This touches the precise point which is here had in view. The 
domineering influence over the mind of an opinion or, it might be 
said, a theory unsupported by evidence is strikingly presented in 
the jealousy of Leontes. He affects to think himself dishonored 
in the point where men find dishonor most intolerable, yet his 
belief springs entirely from* his imagination ; it is self-engendered 
and is the spontaneous outgrowth of a suspicious temperament. 
It seizes on his mind like a deadly infection and its ravages are 
like those of a virulent disease in a constitution predisposed to its 
attack. It quenches in him all generous feeling as well as all 
power of true perception. Like all theorists, he twists every cir- 
cumstance, however irrelevant, into support of his theory. The 
innocent familiarities between his wife and his friend are to his 
distorted vision proofs of the grossest guilt ; a friendly clasp of 
the hand is a sign of illicit love. His mind at once swarms with 
fancies, which he takes for facts, and adduces as proofs ; nay, 
more, he argues because such things are possible and have occurred 
before and will occur again, his surmises must be true. He 
points to the flight of Polyxenes, whom he has marked for 
murder, as a sign of guilt and plumes himself upon his superior 
penetration. 

" How bless'd am I 
In my just censure ! in my true opinion ! 
Alack for lesser knowledge ! 
All 's true that is mistrusted." 

Act II. Sc. 1. 

These fancies he endeavors to impose upon his counselors and 
courtiers, and when they reject his imputations as grossly improb- 
able, he claims for his empty suspicions all the force due to the 
evidence of the senses. He says : — 



e 

: 






THE WINTER'S TALE. 107 

" You smell this business with a sense as cold 
As is a dead man's nose; but I do see 't and feel 9 t 
As you feel doing thus (touching Antigonus) and see withal 
The instruments that feel." 

And, again, he points to the circumstantial evidence : — 

" Camillo's flight 
Added to their familiarity 

(Which was as gross as ever touch'd conjecture ; 
That lack'd sight only, nought for approbation [proof] 
But only seeing, all other circumstances 
Made up to the deed) doth push on this proceeding." 

Act II. Sc. 1. 

He racks his invention for proofs of his dishonor and makes his 
own sense of shame and his dread of the opinion of others 
corroborating circumstances : — 

" They are here with me already, whispering, sounding, 
Sicilia 's a so-forth." 

" Contempt and clamor 
Will hiss me to the grave." . 

As he becomes debased he grows vindictive, and through the 
forms of a trial seeks Hermione's life, yet to give color to his 
proceedings he refers the truth of his charges to the oracle. 

" Though I am satisfied and need no more 
Than what I know, yet shall the oracle 
Give rest to the minds of others," etc. 

Act II. Sc. 1. 

When the oracle, however, declares Hermione innocent, he does 
not hesitate to impeach its validity. 

" There is no truth at all in the oracle • 
The sessions shall proceed : this is more falsehood." 

Act III. Sc. 2. 

So strong and so foreign to the love of truth is the tyranny of a 
favorite theory over the mind. As Bacon says : " The imagina- 
tion becomes infected" and to such men their conclusions " seem 
probable and all but certain ; to all men else incredible and vain." 
Nov. Org. Book I. Aph. 64. 

Viewed as a poetic creation and piece of dramatic painting, it 
would be difficult to find anything more spirited and lifelike than 
the delineation of the working of Leontes' mind. The mean lies 
and innuendoes, the gross fancies, the self-torture and vindictive 
purposes, the rude manners and utter loss of dignity, the wrench 
and overthrow of his better nature are brought out with almost 



108 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

frightful vividness ; but amid all this discord there mingles the 
undertone of a father's love. Mamillius, a boy of extraordinary 
promise, is doted on by his father, who sees in the resemblance 
the child bears to himself a sign of his legitimacy. 

" What, hast smutch'd thy nose ? 
They say it is a copy out of mine ; 
Thou want'st the rough pash, and the shoots I have 
To be full like me ; yet they say we are 
Almost as like as eggs ; women say so 
That will say anything," etc. 

Act I. Sc. 2. 

Nothing less startling than the death of Mamillius, which comes 
in confirmation of the oracle, could bend the stubborn mind of the 
king to yield up his opinion and acknowledge his injustice. His 
penitence then becomes as entire as his wrong-doing had been 
absolute; and notwithstanding his previous tyranny and the 
odium it has excited, his long years of sorrow and faithful mem- 
ory and the high courtesy of his bearing prove him at heart "a 
graceful gentleman " and restore him to a place in our regard. 

The groundless belief of Leontes in his wife's infidelity is 
entirely analogous with those baseless theories which Bacon 
enumerates among the chief obstacles of the discovery of truth, 
and which he sets down as necessary results of the ancient 
method of philosophizing, which permitted the mind, impatient of 
examining particulars, to fly at once to general conclusions, which 
it then assumes as indisputable principles, from which to argue 
and build up a system by ," meditation and agitation of wit " 
{vide Nov. Org. Book I. Aph. 19, 44, 62). In this process of 
the mind " the first conclusion colors and brings into conformity 
with itself all that comes after"" Nov. Org. Book I. Aph. 46. 

And thus with Leontes' theory of Hermione's guilt, it is almost 
entirely a creation of his own brain, having but one or two 
grossly misinterpreted facts to rest upon ; but having from these 
facts jumped to a conclusion, he will admit no possibility of 
error, but at once proceeds by logic and reasoning to wrest all 
other facts into conformity with it. 

It may be observed that the fallacies and tendencies to error 
which infest the human mind and which Bacon distributes into 
four classes, denominated respectively idols of the tribe, of the 
cave, of the forum, and of the theatre, are sometimes divided by 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 109 

very slight shades of difference, as in this case of Leontes' theory ; 
the tenacity with which he holds to it is an "idol of the tribe," 
whereas the theory itself is more properly " an idol of the 
theatre." 

Hermione, who adds to the dignity of the gentlewoman the 
majesty of the Queen, is a supreme representative of the most 
honored class. She is " sovereignly honorable." Notwithstand- 
ing her high place and her pride of character, she has' a real 
humility of heart and impersonates a goodness that is proof 
against all the chances of Time. No vehemence nor violence 
clouds her intellect or ruffles her feelings. Subjected to in- 
dignities particularly galling to a queen and a lady, she has 
neither tears nor complaints, but feels " that honorable grief that 
burns worse than tears drown." In all her deportment there 
breathe a lofty dignity and self-respect ; a consciousness that her 
wounded honor needs no defense but its own integrity, and she 
waits with patient fortitude for Time to vindicate her truth. She 

says : — 

" Some ill planet reigns ! 
I must be patient until the heavens look 
With an aspect more favorable." 

Act II. Sc. 1. 

This serenity is the measure of her force. Still she is far from 
silent under the accusations against her, but stands resolutely for 
her honor and that of her children. 

" Behold me — 
A fellow of the royal bed, which owe 
A moiety of the throne, a great king's daughter 
The mother to a hopeful prince — here standing 
To prate and talk for life and honor 'fore 
Who please to come and hear. For life, I prize it 
As I weigh grief, which I would spare : for honor 
9 T is a derivative from me to mine 
And only that I stand for" 

Act III. Sc. 2. 

In words free from all excitement, she repels the charges of the 
king and points to her life in its whole tenor and integrity as an 
ample refutation of any surmises that would fasten shame on her 
name. In all her acts and words, she exhibits a greatness that 
rises above the storms of passion and the adverse chances of life. 
She is statuesque in her simple grandeur, — a grandeur free from 
all austerity ; and like an antique ideal, in which a transcendent 



110 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

beauty sets bounds to passion and pain, Hermione subordinates 
to dignity and grace the expression of the most poignant suffer- 
ing and anguish. 

Camillo is another character which gives dramatic form to a 
leading principle involved in the scheme of the piece, that is, the 
giving of counsel as one of the most important and honorable 
services that can be rendered between man and man. Camillo 
is a wise and trusted counselor. It is a proof of his integrity 
and skill in affairs that he has raised himself from an humble 
station to the highest dignity. " From meaner form, he has been 
bencird and rais'd to worship." The king leans upon his wisdom 
and ability in both public and private business. When he first 
hears Leontes' charges against the queen, his quick sense of 
honor and his sympathy with his sovereign mistress lead him to 
tell the king that he " never spake what did hecome him less" 
and earnestly begs him to be cured of that " diseased opinion ; 
but upon finding his efforts useless, nay more, that he is expected 
to poison the good Polyxenes, he prudently yields or seems to 
yield to the tyrant's wishes and thus gains an opportunity to fly. 

" I must 
Forsake the court : to do 't or not, is certain 
To rue a break-neck." 

Reaching Bohemia, he becomes there the minister of affairs as 
he before had been in Sicilia. After the lapse of years, he longs 
to revisit his home, but Polyxenes entreats him to stay, and the 
tone of the entreaty throws light on his character. 

" As thou lov'st me, Camillo, wipe not out the rest of thy services by leav- 
ing me now; the need I have of thee thine own goodness hath made; better not to 
have had thee than thus to want thee: thou having made me businesses which none 
without thee can sufficiently manage, must either stay to execute them thyself or 
take away with thee the very services thou hast done," etc. Act IV. Sc. 1. 

Wise and persuasive, Camillo may be considered an embodi- 
ment of that ability in " counsel or civil prudence" that under- 
lies the action of the piece and everywhere (as will be seen) 
shows through the airy veil of poetry that envelops it. 

Paulina's place in the picture is easily determined. In her is 
fully developed that sentiment of honor which accompanies a 
high standard of character, and which is shown in a quick sense 
of wrong whether offered to one's self or others. She fires with 
honest indignation at the dishonor done the Queen, and possess- 






THE WINTER'S TALE. Ill 

ing withal a high spirit and a hot temper and being moreover a 
lady preeminently endowed with the gift of speech, she resents 
the Queen's wrongs with a zeal and vehemence for which threats 
of the fagot and stake have no terrors. Her loud and angry 
scolding offsets the reticence and resignation of the Queen. 
Learning that her imprisoned mistress has become a mother, she 
offers, in the hope of softening the king, to carry to him the new- 
born babe, for 

" The silence often of pure innocence 
Persuades when speaking fails." 

At the same time she has no mind to trust to that influence 
alone, for she tells us : — 

" I '11 use that tongue I have ; if wit flow from 't 
As boldness from my bosom, let it not be doubted 
I shall do good." 

In pursuance of her undertaking, she forces her way past the 
guards and lays before the monarch the child, the sight of which, 
however, instead of moving his pity, inflames his jealousy to the 
highest pitch. But his yiolence and fury are no match for the 
noisy volubility with which she forces home to him her opinion of 
his conduct in terms that majesty is seldom permitted to hear. 
With a tongue as loud and incessant as the strokes of a flail, she 
berates the monarch and derides his threats until she is put by 
main force out of his presence. 

Paulina is well aware of her terrible powers of speech, and has 
too much good sense to arouse them to activity, except upon due 
occasion. Like most honorable and hot-tempered people, she is 
as quick to forgive as she is to resent ; consequently, when she sees 
that Leontes is penitent and touched to the heart, the same sense 
of right which has prompted her rebuke leads her to be as earnest 
in relieving his grief as before she had been in denouncing his 
tyranny, and at the conclusion of the play we are impressed rather 
with her goodness and amiability than otherwise. 

Antigonus and the other lords of the court show no special 
points of character except in their high sense of honor, which 
leads them to uphold the Queen as an injured lady. They arc 
examples of men forming their judgments by the rule of honor. 
They utterly reject the conclusions of the king as dishonorable 
to himself, and see in the Queen's irreproachable life a full proof 
of her innocence. They tell the King in answer to his charges : — 






112 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

" If this be so 
We need no grave to bury honesty ; 
There 's not a grain of it, the face to sweeten 
Of the whole earth." 

Antigonus gives his life to preserve his oath inviolate and save 
the life of Perdita. 

The boy Mamillius is a delightful sketch, in which the senti- 
ment of honor is pushed to the extreme. So keen is his sense of 
honor that he sickens at the shame heaped upon his mother. 

" He straight declin'd, droop'd, took it deeply, 
Fasten'd and fix'd the shame on 't in himself, 
Threw off his spirits, his appetite, his sleep, 
And downright languish'd." 

He dies of grief at the dishonor done his mother and reflected 
on himself, a circumstance which in the characteristic language of 
the piece is thus expressed : — 

" His honorable thoughts 
(Thoughts high for one so tender) cleft the heart 
That could conceive a gross and foolish sire 
Blemish'd his gracious dam." 

Act III. Sc. 2. 

And here in passing may be noticed the exquisite finish of this 
play-writer as well as the rigor of his method, as exhibited in the 
mental traits of this character so slightly sketched ; for such traits 
are portrayed by touches taken from art and the standard of 
beauty, as thus : — 

" Mamillius. I love you best. 

Lady. And why so, my lord ? 
Mam. Not for because 

Your brows are black ; yet black brows, they say, 
Become some women best : so that there be not 
Too much hair there, but in a semicircle 
Or in a half moon, made with a pen. 
Lady. Who taught you this ? 

Mam. I learn'd it out of women's faces." 

Act II. Sc. 1. 

Florizel, again, is a pattern of manly honor and graceful man- 
ners. His protestations of love are fine hyperboles, as fervent as 
elegant, and he relinquishes a kingdom for the sake of his truth. 

The picture of his and Perdita's love is an ideal of trust and 
tenderness. As he says, " So turtles pair that never mean to 
part." It belongs to that enchanted land that lies along the sea- 
coast of Bohemia, where there is " an ampler ether, a diviner air ; " 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 113 

where life is robed in brighter colors and has a richer humor ; 
where truth and purity walk the earth in human form and delight- 
ful impossibilities are ordinary events. 

This bewitching region is the dwelling-place of Perdita, who is 
the queen of it ; for she is a representative of the poetical rather 
than the ethical side of " the fair and good," and a type of that 
beauty which it is the aim of Art to create. She is not merely an 
ideal ; she represents the ideal. She is 

" The most peerless piece of earth 
That e'er the sun shone bright on." 

But it is her exquisite grace of mind, the indwelling spirit of 
this rare beauty, that gives her the poetical charm. In Hermione 
we see a moral beauty that springs from the grand and magnani- 
mous virtues, but in Perdita, a sensible and intellectual grace 
that results from an instinctive decorum. In her first words she 
exhibits her exquisite sense of the becoming : — 

" My gracious sir, 
To chide at your extremes it not becomes me : 
Oh, pardon, that I name them ; your high self 
The gracious mark of the land, you have obscured 
With a swain' *s wearing y and me, poor lowly maid, 
Most goddess-like prank' 'd up. But that our feasts 
In every mess have folly, and the feeders 
Digest it with a custom, I should blush 
To see you so attir'd, sworn, I think, 
To show myself a glass" 

Act IV. Sc. 3. 

Like the other characters, Perdita is drawn with great sim- 
plicity. She has prominence only in a single scene, but that is 
one of exceeding beauty. As queen of the festival, she distributes 
among her guests flowers — themselves " bringing the swiftest 
thought of beauty " — and her sense of propriety is marked in 
her gracefully fitting the flowers of different seasons to the dif- 
ferent ages of her guests. Polyxenes says to her : — 

" Shepherdess, 
(A fair one are you) well you fit our ages 
With flowers of winter " 

With like fitness, to men of middle age she gives flowers of 
midsummer, whilst to her younger friends she expresses her regret 
that she has no flowers of the spring suitable for them : — 

8 



114 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

" Now, my fairest friends, 
I would I had some flowers o* the spring, that might 
Become your time of day, and yours and yours," etc. 

But a fortunate compensation is made for this want, as it occa- 
sions the fine adjuration to Proserpina and the description, so 
full of classic grace and association, of the flowers the goddess let 
fall from Dis's wagon. 

A striking similarity between Perdita's distribution of these 
flowers and Bacon's enumeration, in his Essay on Gardens, of 
the flowers belonging to different seasons, has frequently been 
pointed out. Yet the Essay was not published until several years 
after Shakespeare's death. As this similarity has a direct bear- 
ing on the purpose of this analysis, it will be here introduced. 

The Essay runs thus : "In December, January, and the latter 
part of November, you must take such things as are green all 
winter, . . . rosemary, . . . lavender, . . . marjoram." 

Perdita says : — 

" Reverend sirs, 
For you there 's rosemary and rue : these keep 
Seeming and savor all the winter long." 

Again the Essay has : " The latter part of January and Febru- 
ary, primroses; for March, there come violets, especially the 
single blue, the yellow daffodil ; in April follow the double white 
violets, the cowslip, flower-de-luce, and lilies of all natures, the 
pale daffodils." 

" That which above all others yields the sweetest smell in the 
air is the violet" 

This passage in its poetic dress appears in the play as follows : 

" Perdita. Daffodils 

That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty : violets dim, 
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, 
Or Cytherea's breath j pale primroses 

. . . bold oxlips and 
The crown-imperial, lilies of all kinds, 
The flower-de-luce being one." 

The Essay continues : " In May and June come pinks of all 
sorts. The French marigold, lavender in flowers ; in July come 
gilliflowers of all varieties." 

The poetic version in the play is as follows : — 



1 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 115 

" Perdita. Sir, the year growing ancient, 
Not yet on summer's death, nor on the birth 
Of trembling winter — the fairest flowers of the season 
Are our carnations and streak? d gilli'vors : 
Hot lavender, mint, savory, marjoram : 
The marigold, . . . these are flowers 
Of middle summer." 

Act IV. Sc. 3. 

There is another striking coincidence between a passage in 
the same scene and Bacon's views of art. In The Intellectual 
Globe, cap. ii., he thus discourses : — 

" There has obtained a now inveterate mode of speaking and 
notion as if Art were something different from Nature, . . . and 
there has insinuated itself into men's minds a still subtler error, 
namely this, that Art is conceived to be a sort of addition to 
Nature, the proper effect of which is to perfect what Nature has 
begun or to correct her where she has deviated. . . . Whereas on 
the contrary there ought to be sunk deep that things artificial do 
not differ from natural in form and essence, but in efficients 
only ; that in reality man has no power over Nature except that 
of motion, namely, to apply or remove natural bodies, but Nature 
performs all the rest within herself" 

This doctrine applied to the propagation and improvement of 
plants is thus expressed in verse : — 

" Yet nature is made better by no mean, 
But nature makes that mean ; so, over that art 
Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art 
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry 
A gentler scion to the wildest stock, 
And make conceive a bark of baser kind 
By bud of nobler race : this is an art 
Which does mend nature ; change it rather ; but 
The art itself is nature." 

Act IV. Sc. 3. 

It may be noted that these lines could not have been suggested 
to Shakespeare by the passage in The Intellectual Globe, as this 
latter work had not been published at the time of the production 
of the play. 

In the translation of The Advancement, i. e., the De Augmentis 
(1623), Bacon gives a passage (Book II. ch. i.) similar to the one 
in The Intellectual Globe, but in The Advancement itself (1605) 
there is nothing that corresponds with it. 



116 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

Perdita, though unschooled, is elegant. She lacks no instruc- 
tion, " for she seems a mistress to most that teach." Her trust in 
her lover is measured by her own truth. 

" By the pattern of her own thoughts, she cuts out 
The purity of his." 

With all her simplicity, her clear mind pierces the forms of 
things and reaches their intrinsic truth. She sees that nature is 
a common heritage ; that the sun and air are free to all ; why 
then does not her truth give her a right to her princely lover, 
whose rank is but factitious ? This inward dignity enables her to 
bear up against the threats of Polyxenes. In this there is a 
dramatic propriety, for though a shepherdess she is of royal line- 
age and her high blood gives her a dignity that befits the occa- 
sion. By this contrast, moreover, between her rustic condition, 
on the one hand, and her exalted beauty and innate dignity on 
the other, she is ingeniously made an exponent of the ideal in 
Art, which is the exaltation of forms and qualities to an imagi- 
nary perfection ; thus raising an object above itself or above its 
ordinary level. So with Perdita — 

" Nothing she does or seems 
But smacks of something greater than herself, 
Too noble for her place." 

The enthusiastic praises of Doricles are also dramatically true 
as coming from a lover enraptured with his mistress. 

" These your unusual weeds to each part of you 
Do give a life : no shepherdess, but Flora 
Peering in April's front." 

Act IV. Sc. 3. 

Yet this is something more than the idealizing of a mistress by 
a lover ; it answers the requirements of the ideal itself by describ- 
ing the rustic maiden as exalted to a goddess by the embellish- 
ments her natural beauty receives from the adornments of art. 

The ideal, again, may be defined as " the best " that can be 
imagined of each thing in its kind, and stands above the ordinary 
forms of its class as a king or queen rises above the ignoble vul- 
gar. Thus, in FlorizePs eulogy of Perdita, all her accomplish- 
ments are carried to the highest degree. 

" Each your doing 
So singular, in each particular 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 117 

Crowns what you are doing in the present deeds 
That all your acts are queens" 

Act IV. Sc. 3. 

This notion of the ideal, which raises a common object by Art 
to a higher pitch of excellence, is humorously parodied by the 
Clown, who speaks of the wonderful beauty the pedler's singing 
imparts to his wares. 

" Inkles, caddisses, cambrics, lawns ; why, he sings them over as they were 
gods and goddesses ; you would think a smock were a she angel ; he so chants to 
the sleeve-hand and the work about the square on H" 

A picture so bright with beauty must needs have some shadow ; 
and in the same group with Perdita is found the graceless rogue, 
Autolycus. With his songs, his humor, his impudence, his lies, 
he is the beau ideal of a cheat. He foils the fine sentiment 
of honor professed by the gentlemen of the piece. He is alto- 
gether of a practical turn and disdains speculative opinion. " For 
the life to come," he says, " I sleep out the thought on 't." Not- 
withstanding he flourished in the days of the Delphic oracle, he is 
of the modern school of philosophy and relies solely on the evi- 
dence of the senses. He says : — 

" To have an open ear, a quick eye, and a nimble hand is necessary for a cut 
purse ; a good nose is requisite also to smell out work for the other senses." 

He plies his vocation with indefatigable industry and enthu- 
siasm. 

" Every lane's end," he says, " every shop, church, session, 
hanging, yields a careful man work." 

He is the staunchest of rogues ; he deems it disreputable to do 
an honest thing, is ashamed to tell the truth, and fears to do good 
lest it might not relish well among his other discredits. " Ha, 
ha," he exclaims, " what a fool honesty is ! and trust, his sworn 
brother, a very simple gentleman." His dread is that he may be 
struck from the roll of rogues and his name put in the book of 
virtue. His character is all of a piece. The only truth he tells 
is in self-defamation, when being disguised in the garments of a 
beggar, he cheats the Clown by accusing " Autolycus" of having 
put them upon him. " Let them call me rogue," he says, "for I 
am proof against that title and what shame else belongs to it." 

The high honor and regard for truth which is the rule of life 



118 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

with the other characters are set off by the unconscionable lies 
Autolycus tells to the crowd of rustics to whom he sells his 
ballads. 

" Here 's another ballad of a fish that appeared upon the coast on Wednes- 
day, the four-score of April, forty thousand fathom above water, and sang 
this ballad against the hard hearts of maids : it was thought she was a woman 
and was turn'd into a cold fish. . . . The ballad is very pitiful and as true. 

Dor. Is it true, think you ? 

Aut. Five justices' hands to it and witnesses more than my pack will hold." 

The Clown and other simpletons of both sexes who surround 
Perdita are foils to her decorum. Their mutual aspersions and 
coarse manners are manifest violations of the rules of grace and 
elegance. The Clown, for whose attentions Mopsa and Dorcas 
are ready to pull caps, assumes to act as " arbiter of elegance," 
and chides the jealous couple for their want of manners in whist- 
ling off before strangers the secrets of milking-time and kiln-hole. 

From the foregoing analysis, it appears that The Winter's 
Tale is so constructed, particularly in the accusation and defense 
of Hermione, as to illustrate those errors into which men fall, 
when, in the absence of experience, they pass judgment on each 
other on the strength of testimony only, that is, opinions and 
reports which, as they are favorable or unfavorable, confer honor 
or shame ; and that in such cases (which particularly include the 
personages of poetry and fiction) the standard is " the good and 
fair," or the mind's ideal of that which is best and most beautiful 
in human character ; comprising as well the grand and heroic 
virtues that confer dignity as exemplified in Hermione as the 
lighter graces and proprieties that confer beauty, in which Perdita 
excels ; and that all the characters except Autolycus and Leon- 
tes (temporarily) recognize this standard in their regard for 
veracity, good name, and the sentiment of honor. Of this sen- 
timent and of the readiness it inspires to defend others when 
unjustly attacked, Paulina is a marked instance, while Autolycus, 
who glories in being a rogue, relieves all this refinement and 
punctilio by his shameless effrontery and dishonesty. But all 
the varied dramatis personam from high to low are but different 
branches from the same stock and stand in harmonious conjunc- 
tion as parts of one whole. It is this moral unity, this unity of 
impression and effect, which enables the dramatist to pair together 
two distinct actions ; such as the trial of Hermione and the festi- 






THE WINTER'S TALE. 119 

val of Perdita, for Hermione is an ideal of honesty or goodness 
and Perdita one of decorum or beauty; but goodness and beauty 
in the moral world are essentially the same ; they are but differ- 
ent aspects of truth which is one or unity itself ; so that like the 
pair of friends spoken of in the play, who, though dissevered, 
" yet shake hands as over " a vast and embrace as it were from 
the ends of opposed winds," this pair of actions is linked and 
united in one whole by their moral identity, being one in spirit 
and sentiment as well as one in " discovery " and catastrophe. 
By the identity, moreover, of goodness and beauty, the moral and 
artistic designs of the piece are most intimately blended ; on the 
one side, the piece being a representation of life in which men 
pass judgment upon the goodness of others, where the idea of 
goodness is necessarily assumed as the rule, while on the other 
side it is a picture which exemplifies the principles of imitative 
art by viewing life itself as an art, of which beauty is the rule. 

It is these features in the composition of The Winter s Tale 
that render it a suggestive study to those who seek a knowledge 
of the artistic method of the Shakespearian drama. 

The Winter's Tale is a counterpart and companion piece of 
Cymbeline, and bears the same relation to it that Poetry does to 
History. 

In Cymbeline, the intercourse of life is represented as an ex- 
change of services ; so likewise is it in The Winter's Tale, But 
services, though aiming generally at utility, are often rendered 
for the sake of the pleasure they impart and for the gracefulness 
of bestowing them. Men testify their fellow-feeling and sense of 
brotherhood by practical help and needful service, but they honor 
each other by elegant hospitalities and the interchange of compli- 
ments and courtesies. And thus in the fable of this play, two 
kings who have been friends from youth lay aside their cares of 
state and reciprocate visits and festivities. They meet as friends, 
not as monarchs, and we see little or nothing of their political 
character. So, likewise, with the sheep-shearing feast, all is 
mirth and pastime. Yet into this picture, thus discharged of all 
prosaic and practical matters, the poet with his usual subtilty 
insinuates the principles of " civil prudence " that govern the 
transactions of men ; for these happy reunions and intercourse 
are suddenly changed by circumstances to division and discord 
which till the action and dialogue with serious business requiring 



120 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 



great wisdom to manage ; and this gives opportunity for illus- 
trations of the doctrines of Civil Knowledge (which conform to 
those laid down by Bacon) and develops also the habit of mind 
of the characters in their use of the deductive method in forming 
conclusions and judgments ; since, according to Bacon, in civil 
matters and sciences founded on dogma and opinion, the use of 
deductive logic is good. 

In the De Augmentis, the nature of civil knowledge is thus 
stated : — 

" Civil Knowledge has three parts according to the three sum- 
mary actions of Society : the knowledge of Conversation, the 
knowledge of Business, and knowledge of Government . . . and 
thus there are three wisdoms of divers natures, which are often 
separate, Wisdom of Behaviour, Wisdom of Business, and Wis- 
dom of Stater De Aug. Book VIII. ch. i. 

This last may be passed at once, as with regard to it Bacon 
imposes silence upon himself, apparently deeming it improper to 
reveal the mysteries and secrets of State ; wherefore, although 
there are frequent hints in the play of the practices of princes 
with respect to the spreading of rumors, proclamations, and the 
use of secret agencies and espionage, it is impossible to say 
whether these are among the arts of which Bacon would have dis- 
coursed, had he written upon the subject. 

As for the " Wisdom of Behaviour," it is abundantly exempli- 
fied and needs but a brief comment. It includes all the arts of 
decorum and urbanity. On this head, Bacon remarks : " The 
Wisdom of Conversation ought certainly not to be over much 
affected, but much less despised, for a wise management thereof 
has not only a grace and honour in itself, but an important influ- 
ence in business and government. For look what an effect is pro- 
duced by the countenance and the carriage of it. Well says the 
poet, — 

" ' Contradict not your words by your look, 

For a man may destroy and betray the force of his words by his 
countenance, nay, and the effect of his deeds also." De Aug. 
Book VIII. ch. i. 

This is the point of Camillo's advice to Leontes, who had urged 
the poisoning of Polyxenes, and had promised after his removal 
to take the Queen again for policy's sake and to prevent scandal* 
Camillo tells him : — 






THE WINTER'S TALE. 121 

" Go, then, and with a countenance as clear 
As friendship wears at feasts, keep with Bohemia 
And with your queen. I am his cnp bearer," etc. 

Act I. Sc. 2. 

But how little Leontes' jealousy suffered him to heed this admo- 
nition and how quickly he betrayed himself are learned from the 
remarks of Polyxenes, who thus describes the change in the king's 
looks and manner : — 

" Pol. The king hath on him such a countenance 
As he had lost some province and a region 
Loved as he loves himself : even now I met him 
With customary compliment, when he 
Wafting his eyes to the contrary, and falling 
A lip of much contempt, speeds from me ; and 
So leaves me to consider what is breeding 
That changes thus his manners." 

Act I. Sc. 2. 

Bacon sums up the art of decorum in these words : " All grace 
and dignity of behaviour may be summed up in the even bal- 
ancing of our own dignity and that of others" De Aug. Book 
VIII. ch. i. 

The spirit of this rule is perfectly exemplified by Perdita, the 
ideal of decorum, whose conscious worth invests her with a self- 
sustaining dignity when she is denounced by the king for pre- 
suming to love " the Sceptre's heir." She says : — 

" Per. I was not much afear'd : for once or twice 
I was about to speak ; and tell him plainly 
The selfsame sun that shines upon his court 
Hides not his visage from our cottage, but 

Looks on alike. Will't please you, sir, be gone ? [To Florizel] 
I told you what would come of this : Beseech you — 
Of your own state take care : this dream of mine 
Being now awake, I '11 queen it no inch further, 
But milk my ewes and weep." 

Act IV. Sc. 3. 

Thus Perdita balances her respect for herself with her respect 
for others, which is an exact fulfillment of the rule of decorum. 

The branch of civil knowledge, however, which in the play 
receives the most copious exemplifications is "The Wisdom of 
Business " or the Art of Negotiation : of this Bacon says : — 

" The Doctrine concerning negotiation is divided into the doc- 
trine concerning scattered occasions and the doctrine concerning 
advancement in life. 






122 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

" The first comprises all the ptossible variety of business , . . 
neither is there any reason to fear that the matter of this know- 
ledge should be so variable that it falls not under precept ; for 
it is much less infinite than the science of government, which yet 
we find very well cultivated. Of this kind of wisdom, it seems 
some of the ancient Romans in their best times were professors ; 
for Cicero reports that a little before his age the senators who had 
most name and opinion for wisdom and practice in affairs (as 
Coruncanious, Curius, Laelius, etc.) used to walk in the forum 
at certain hours, where they might give audience to their fellow- 
citizens, who would consult with them not merely upon law but 
upon business of all kinds, as the marriage of a daughter, the 
education of a son, the purchase of a farm, and every other occa- 
sion incidental to a man's life. Whence it appears that there 
is a wisdom of counsel and advice even in private causes arising 
out of an universal insight and experience in the affairs of the 
world which is used, indeed, upon particular causes but is gathered 
by general observation of causes of a like nature." De Aug. Book 
VIII. ch. ii. 

This " wisdom of counsel," then, so far from being confined to 
the more important emergencies of life, is applicable to all occa- 
sions and affairs where advice is asked or given, or even persua- 
sion attempted. To counsel and to persuade have similar aims ; 
all who counsel wish to persuade, and all who persuade affect to 
give good counsel. Therefore these two notions counsel and per- 
suasion, thus intimately allied (the latter under the various forms 
of entreaty, prayer, beseeching, exhortation, petition, and other 
modes of inducing men to assent to opinions or to some course of 
action) pervade every scene of the play. And as this is an impor- 
tant feature in its structure it may be worth while to run rapidly 
through the leading scenes. 

In the opening of the play, Leontes and the queen entreat 
Polyxenes to prolong his visit; Leontes endeavors to persuade 
Camillo of the queen's guilt and urges him to poison Polyxenes ; 
next follow the entreaties of Polyxenes that Camillo disclose 
what danger is approaching him, and Camillo in turn counseling 
Polyxenes to fly ; after Hermione has been sent to prison, Antig- 
onus and the other lords attempt to persuade the king to recall 
the queen, while he, on the other hand, seeks to prove to them the 
queen's guilt ; then follows the scene with Paulina, who professes 









THE WINTER'S TALE. 123 

herself the king's " most obedient counselor " and brings in the 
babe, for 

" The silence of pure innocence 
Persuades when speaking fails." 

The king orders the child to be put to death and the courtiers 
beg him on their knees to change his purpose ; the defense of 
Hermione on her trial is, of course, an attempt to persuade ; 
Paulina by protestation endeavors to win belief for her assurance 
that the queen is dead, in the course of which she uses the follow- 
ing fine hyperbole drawn from prayer : — 

" A thousand knees 
Ten thousand years together, naked, fasting, 
Upon a barren mountain, and still winter 
In storm perpetual, could not move the gods 
To look that way thou wert." 

At the opening of the fourth act, Polyxenes entreats Camillo 
to remain at his court ; in the next scene, Autolycus begs assist- 
ance of the Clown ; then come the protestations of Florizel ; then 
the advice of Polyxenes to Florizel that he acquaint his father 
with his design to marry ; next follows the counsel of Camillo to 
Florizel to fly to Sicily, etc. 

The fifth act presents like instances ; and the foregoing list 
omits altogether the oaths, adjurations, and other similar means of 
winning assent and belief that may be met with on every page. 

All the important situations of the play are marked by the 
seeking and giving of counsel. Leontes consults Camillo respect- 
ing the alleged dishonor of the queen ; Camillo advises him most 
strenuously to drop his suspicions or at least to conceal his feel- 
ings. Leontes accedes : — 

" Thou dost advise me 
Even so as I mine own course have set down, 
I will seem friendly as thou hast advised." 

Polyxenes consults Camillo on occasion of the change in the 
king's demeanor ; Camillo advises him to fly : — 

" Therefore mark my counsel, 
Which must he even as swiftly followed as 
I mean to utter it." 

Leontes denounces the queen to the gentlemen of the court ; 
they, on the other hand, counsel him to dismiss his charges : — 



124 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

" It is for you we speak, not for ourselves ; 
You are abus'd and by some putter-on," etc. 

But he angrily rejects their advice : — 

•'•' Why. what need we 
Commune with you of this, but rather follow 
Our forceful instigation ? our prerogative 
Calls not your counsels^' etc. 

To give a color to his action, however, he affects to ask counsel 
of the oracle : — 

•'•' Now from the oracle 
They will bring all ; whose spiritual counsel had 
Shall stop or spur me." 

And to pass other instances, the counsel given by Cainillo to 
Prince Florizel on the occasion of his flying from home in order 
to marry a shepherdess, is a pointed example of one of those par- 
ticular emergencies, and of that kind of civil prudence of which 
Bacon speaks, as a part of civil knowledge : and is a fair, full, 
and apposite illustration of his doctrine. As the passage is also 
used as an example of oratory, it will be quoted further on. when 
rhetoric as a topic of the piece is treated of. 

It is evident that the notions of counsel, advice, persuasion, 
entreaty, etc., run through the piece, and that the incidents and 
dialogue are so constructed as to serve as illustrations of that doc- 
trine termed by Bacon " Wisdom of Counsel and Advice.'* or, 
;; the doctrine of scattered occasions." 

The art of persuasion is Rhetoric ; and inasmuch as counsel and 
persuasion pervade the play, the dramatist skillfully wraps up in 
the dialogue examples of the chief points in the Art of Rhetoric. 
All men are rhetorician.- : every man attempts to persuade or dis- 
suade, accuse or excuse, praise or blame, and the Art of Rhetoric 
is simply the best method of doing these things. It may. there- 
fore, be contended that any play or writing will furnish examples 
of the art. and unquestionably this is the case, but such examples 
would be casual only : whereas in the play the instances are of 
special technicalities, and cover moreover the principal points of 
the art ; besides the plot is constructed in a way to call for the 
use of rhetoric in accusation, defense, persuasion, and praise, and 
therefore it is fair to infer that the examples given are not merely 
the use of the art by the speakers for their own purposes, but in- 
tended also by the poet for illustration of the art itself. 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 125 

Under Bacon's classification, Rhetoric is a part of the " Art of 
Transmission or Delivery " and is called by him the doctrine of 
" the ornament of speech," the end of which he describes as being 
" to fill the imagination with such observations and images as 
may assist reason " in coming to a conclusion. Rhetoric includes 
also " the invention of arguments" and is the practical applica- 
tion of arguments so invented. 

Bacon is brief upon the art of rhetoric, finding but few deficien- 
cies in it. He speaks of its having been specially cultivated by 
the ancients, particularly by Aristotle, whose treatise on the sub- 
ject remains to this day unsurpassed. Bacon was well acquainted 
with it, and although he points out some omissions in it, he calls 
it " the best book of the best author." It will be cited here, not 
because it is supposed that the poet had it before him when he 
wrote — for he himself is one of the most skillful rhetoricians 
that ever lived — but because its profound analysis of the subject 
may be used to show how aptly passages of the play exemplify 
principles of the rhetorical art, and this will answer the purpose 
of this analysis. 

Aristotle defines rhetoric as " a faculty of considering all the 
possible means of persuasion on every subject." 

There are three kinds of orations, the judicial, the deliberative, 
and the demonstrative. 

The business of the judicial orator is accusation or defense ; 
his object, justice or injustice, and his proofs are drawn from 
common opinions concerning the just or unjust." Aris. Rhet. 
Book I. ch. iii. 

A specimen of judicial oratory is the speech of the Queen in 
her own defense. The scene is a court of justice, and Herniione- 
is arraigned for treason. Both the charge and the denial are un- 
supported by testimony. In such cases, where aspersions are 
thrown upon character, Aristotle points out that they are to be 
met : — 

1. By contradiction. 

2. By extenuation and excuse. 

3. By pointing to previous good character. 

4. By exciting the favorable regard of the hearer for one's 
self, and the reverse for the adversary. Aris. Rhet. Book III. 
ch. xv. §§ 2, 3, xvii. § 12. 

All these points are met in Hermione's defense. 



126 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

First, she directly contradicts the charge : — 

" Since what I am to say must be but that 
Which contradicts my accusation ; and 
The testimony on my part no other 
But what comes from myself, it shall scarce boot me 
To say ' Not guilty : ' mine integrity 
Being counted falsehood shall, as I express it, 
Be so received. But thus, if powers divine 
Behold our human actions (as they do) 
I doubt not then, but innocence shall make 
False accusation blush and tyranny 
Tremble at patience." 

Act III. Sc. 2. 

She next points to her " previous good character " and boldly 
appeals to the conscience of the king : — 

" You, my lord, best know 
(Who least will seem to do so) my past life 
Hath been as continent, as chaste, as true, 
As I am now unhappy," etc. 

" / appeal 

To your own conscience, sir, before Polyxenes 
Came to your court, how I was in your grace, 
How merited to be so," etc. 

She then " extenuates and excuses " any intimacy with Polyx- 
enes : — 

" For Polyxenes 
(With whom I am accused) / do confess 
I lov'd him as in honor he required, 
With such a kind of love as might became 
A lady like me ; with a love, even such 
So and no other, as yourself commanded," etc. 

And lastly, by an exact and orderly narration of the grievous 
and unmerited wrongs that had been heaped upon her, she excites 
pity for herself and indignation against her accuser. 

" Sir, spare your threats ; 
To me can life be no commodity : 
The crown and comfort of my life, your favor 
I do give lost ; for I do feel it gone ; 
But know not how it went : My dearest joy 
And fr st- fruits of my body, from his presence 
I am barr'd like one infectious : My third comfort 
Starred most unluckily is from my breast, 
The innocent milk in its most innocent mouth 
HaVd out to murder" etc. 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 127 



an eye to its merits as a piece of judicial oratory, which the situa- 
tion itself shows it to be, and it will then be seen that the most 
practiced rhetorician could not state the case with more force and 
technical skill than it is here put. 

Of the second species of oratory above named, that is, the de- 
liberative, " the business is partly persuasion, partly dissuasion, 
for invariably those who in their individual capacities advise and 
those who publicly harangue, effect one of these objects. 

The object of the deliberative orator is the expedient or inexpe- 
dient, and his proofs are drawn from common opinions concern- 
ing good and evilT Aris. Rhet. Book I. ch. iii. 

All counsel and advice (of which we have seen the prevalence 
in this play) fall under this head ; and an example of deliberative 
oratory, perfect in all essential parts (the rules for which are of 
course the same whether it be addressed to an individual or a 
multitude) is furnished by the counsel given by Camillo to Flori- 
zel to sail for Sicily. This passage has been previously men- 
tioned as an example of Bacon's doctrine of "the wisdom of 
scattered occasions," or " wise conduct in particular emergen- 
cies. 

In the drama, a specimen of oratory must be broken up more 
or less into dialogue ; but this has the advantage of showing the 
effect the speaker makes upon the mind of the auditor. What is 
looked for here is the technical skill which renders the passage an 
example of certain rhetorical principles. 

The first point in deliberative oratory is to gain the favor of 
the person addressed. Aris. Rhet. Book II. ch. i. § 3. 

There are three causes independently of the proof adduced of a 
speaker's deserving belief, viz., ability, integrity, and good-will. 
Aris. Rhet. Book II. ch. i. § 5. 

Camillo, therefore, first seeks to give Florizel the impression 
that he is his friend and an able and honest one. He begins : — 

" Sir, I think 
You have heard of my poor services i' the love 
That I have borne your father? 
Flor. Very nobly 

Have you deserved : it is my father's music 
To speak your deeds ; not little of his care 
To have them recompensed as thought on. 
Cam. Well, my lord, 




128 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

If you may please to think, I love the king 
And through him what is nearest to him, which is 
Your gracious self. 

Act. IY. Sc. 3. 

Thus having laid a foundation for being considered by Florizel 
as a friend and a man of ability, and as having his interest at 
heart, Camillo goes on to inspire still greater confidence by prom- 
ising to effect all the prince's wishes. 

" Embrace but my direction, 
(If your more ponderous and settled project 
May suffer alteration,) on mine honor 
I '11 point you where you shall have such receiving 
As shall become your highness ; where you may 
Enjoy your mistress (from the whom, I see 
There 's no disjunction to be made, but by, 
As heavens forefend ! your ruin :) marry her ; 
And (with my best endeavors, in your absence) 
Your discontenting father strive to qualify, 
And bring him up to liking." 

Camillo, now having gained the full confidence of his hearer, as 
the short speech of the Prince indicates, 

(How, Camillo, 
May this, almost a miracle, be done ? 
That I may call thee something more than man, 
And, after that, trust to thee, — ) 

reveals his plan, in favor of which he enlists the imagination of 
his hearer by portraying in vivid colors the happy results that 
will follow its adoption. 

" Then list to me : 

This follows, — if you will not change your purpose, 

But undergo this flight, make for Sicilia ; 

And there present yourself and your fair princess, 

(For so I see she must be,) 'fore Leontes ; 

She shall be habited as becomes 

The partner of your bed. Methinks, I see 

Leontes, opening his free arms, and weeping 

His welcomes forth ; asks thee, the son, forgiveness, 

As Hwere in the father 's person, kisses the hands 

Of your fresh princess ; o'er and tier divides him 

' Twixt his unkindness and his kindness ; the one 

He chides to hell, and bids the other grow, 

Faster than thought, or time" 

Having thus " filled the imagination of his hearer with an 






THE WINTER'S TALE. 129 

image " of " the good " that would accrue from his plan, Camillo 
goes on to point out its feasibility in detail, and in answer to 
FlorizeFs inquiry what color for the visitation he should hold up, 
replies : — 

" Sent by the king, your father, 
To greet him, and to give him comforts. Sir, 
The manner of your bearing towards him, with 
What you, as from your father, shall deliver, 
Things known betwixt us three, I '11 write you down : 
The which shall point you forth at every sitting 
What you must say ; that he shall not perceive 
But that you have your father's bosom there 
And speak his very heart." 

The " expediency " of his plan being thus shown, and " the 
good " that must flow from it, Camillo next dissuades Florizel 
from his own course by painting in equally strong colors " the 
evil " that is sure to attend it. 

" A course more promising 
Than a wild dedication of yourselves 
To unpatVd waters, undreamed shores, most certain 
To miseries enough : no hope to help you, 
But, as you shake off one, to take another : 
Nothing so certain as your anchors ; who ^ 
Do their best office, if they can but stay you 
Where you '11 be loath to be." 

He concludes by adding a maxim in the nature of an argument 
(Aris. Rhet. Book III. ch. xvii. § 17) calculated to move strongly 
the feelings of his hearer and force his assent. 

" Besides you know, 
Prosperity 's the very bond of love, 
Whose fresh complexion and whose heart together 
Affliction alters." 

Act. IV. Sc. 3. 

It is clear that in this piece of " deliberative," Camillo follows 
the most approved rules of rhetoric. 

The business of demonstrative rhetoric is praise or blame ; its 
object is honor or disgrace, and its j)roqfs are drawn from the 
common opinions concerning the honorable and dishonorable. 
Aris. Rhet. Book I. ch. iii. 

Of demonstratives, the play furnishes two pointed examples, 
one of praise, the other of dispraise. These are necessarily brief, 
9 



130 THE WINTER'S TALE. 



. 



the poet giving in a condensed form (as in other parts of his 
work) the spirit and sentiment of the thing imitated. It must, 
moreover, be borne in mind that rhetorical rules are applicable to 
all speech, and are not confined to set harangues. 

In praising, the speaker must avail himself of amplification in 
many cases. 

"Amplification," says Aristotle, "falls in easily with demon- 
strative oratory ; for its essence is its being above mediocrity. 
On which account we should make a comparison with the gener- 
ality of men, if we cannot with men of character ; since the be- 
ing above the average seems to indicate virtue. In a word, of 
all the formulae common to each branch of rhetoric, amplification 
best suits demonstrative, for the orator takes the actions for 
granted and it thus remains only to invest them with greatness 
and beauty" Book I. ch. ix. § 39. 

The dramatist goes one step further than this rule, for he 
compares the actions of his subject, not with those of others but 
with each other, all being supremely excellent, yet the last still 
considered the best. It is the eulogy of Perdita by Florizel. 

" What you do 
Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet, 
I 'd have you do it ever ; when you sing 
I 'd have you buy and sell so ; so give alms, 
Pray so ; and, for the ordering of your affairs, 
To sing them too ; when you do dance, I wish you 
A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do 
Nothing but that, move still, still so, and own 
No other function ; each your doing, 
So singular in each particular, 
Crowns what you are doing in the present deeds 
That all your acts are queens" 

Act IV. So. 3. 

Dramatically considered, this is the fond admiration of an ar- 
dent young lover ; rhetorically, it is a specimen of demonstrative 
speech, and poetically, it is the description of an ideal, which by 
reason of its superlative excellence, as has already been noted, 
stands among the ordinary forms of its kind, as a king or queen 
stands among the common populace. 

Another demonstrative, in this case of dispraise, is Paulina's 
denunciation of the king after the apparent death of Hermione. 
It takes the form of a climax. 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 131 

" Thy tyranny- 
Together working with thy jealousies, 
Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle 
For girls of nine ! O, think what they have done, 
And then run mad indeed ; stark mad ! for all 
Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it. 
That thou betray 'dst Polyxenes, Hwas nothing • 
That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant, 
And damnable ungrateful ; nor teas H much 
Thou wouldst have poisoned good Camillo's honor, 
To have him kill a king ; poor trespasses, 
More monstrous standing by j whereof I reckon 
The casting forth to crows thy baby daughter, 
To be or none, or little ; though a devil 
Would have shed water out of fire, ere done ? t : 
Nor is it directly laid to thee, the death 
Of the young prince, whose honorable thoughts 
(Thoughts high for one so tender) cleft the heart 
That could conceive a gross and foolish sire 
Blemish 'd his gracious dam : this is not, no, 
Laid to thy answer : But the last, — O lords, 
When I have said, cry woe ! the queen, the queen, 
The sweefst, dear'st creature 9 s dead ; and vengeance for 't 
Not dropped down yet." 

Act III. Sc. 2. 

Dramatically, this passage is characteristic of the zealous, high- 
tempered Paulina, while as a demonstrative, it lifts one particular 
misdeed into special singularity and prominence by the exclusion 
of all others, however heinous, as greatly inferior. 

Proofs are in Rhetoric either Examples or Enthymemes 1 as 
in Logic, Induction, or Syllogism, for an Example is a short In- 
duction, and an Enthymeme a short syllogism. Aris. Rhet. Book 
I. ch. ii. 

Enthymemes are adduced from probabilities and signs, so that 
by enthymemes and examples all speeches effect their demon- 
strative proofs, and in no other way whatever. Book I. ch. ii. 
§§ 8, 14. 

Of an argument derived from signs, Leontes frames for us an 
example : — 

" Is whispering nothing ? 
Is leaning cheek to cheek ? is meeting noses ? 

1 Enthymeme. For those who may not bo familiar with this scholastic term, it 
may be noted that an enthymeme is a rhetorical syllogism, or one of which for the 
sake of brevity one of the premises is suppressed. 



132 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

Kissing with inside lip ? stopping the career 
Of laughter with a sigh ? (a note infallible 
Of breaking honesty) — horsing foot on foot ? 
Skulkino- in corners ? wishing clocks more swift ? 
Hours, minutes ? noon, midnight ? and all eyes blind 
AYith the pin and web, but theirs, theirs only 
That would unseen be wicked ? is this nothing f 
Why then the world and all that 's in 't is nothing ; 
The covering sky is nothing ; Bohemia 's nothing, 
My wife is nothing, nor nothing have these nothings 
If this be nothing." 

Act I. Sc. 2. 






Examples, used as arguments, may be either of fact or in- 
vented. Of the latter there are two species, illustration and 
fable. Book II. ch. xx. 

Leontes, after pointing to the flight of Camillo and Polyxenes 
as a proof of the truth of his suspicions, strengthens his case with 
an " illustration " descriptive of the effect upon him of finding 
his opinion thus verified. 

" There may be in the cup 

A spider steep'd, and one may drink, depart, 

And yet partake no venom ; for his knowledge 

Is not infected : but if one present 

Th' abhorr'd ingredient to his eye, make known 

How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides, 

TTith violent hefts ; / have drunk and seen the spider." 

Act IE Sc. 1. 

Among proofs that originate independently of art such as Wit- 
nesses, Deeds, Oaths, and others, Aristotle also mentions proverbs 
on the ground that they are decisions of men of prudence, and 
attest the experience of mankind. Book I. ch. xv. 

The dramatist also introduces a proverb by way of proof and 
couples it with the resemblance of a child to the father as a sign 
of legitimacy : — 

" Leontes. This brat is none of mine, 

It is the issue of Polyxenes. 
Paulina. It is yours ; 

And might ice lay the old proverb to your charge 
So like you, 'tis the worse. Behold, my lords, 
Although the print be little, the whole matter 
And copy of 'the father ; eye, nose, lip, 
The trick of his frown, his forehead, nay, the valley, 
The pretty dimple of his chin and cheek ; his smiles, 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 133 

The very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger ; 
And thou, good goddess Nature, which hath made it 
So like to him that got it," etc. 

Act II. Sc. 3. 

One purpose of this analysis being to decide, if possible, 
whether the Art of Rhetoric is casually or intentionally exempli- 
fied in the piece, the illustrations are carried to a greater length 
than they otherwise would be. The more special and technical 
such illustrations are, the stronger, of course, the inference that 
they are not casual. 

To quote again from Aristotle : " The principles of Rhetoric 
out of which enthymemes are to be drawn are the common opinions 
that men have concerning expedient and inexpedient, just and 
unjust, honourable and dishonourable, for as in Logic where cer- 
tain and infallible knowledge is the scope of our proof, so in 
rhetoric the principles must be common opinions. 

"And because nothing is expedient, inexpedient, just, unjust, 
honourable, or dishonourable but what has been done or is to be 
done, and nothing is to be done that is not possible, it is neces- 
sary that the speaker have propositions on the subject of possi- 
bility and impossibility and on the question whether a fact has 
or has not happened, will or will not take place" Book I. 
ch. iii. § 8. 

Of enthymemes drawn from these fundamental and preliminary 
topics, Leontes treats us to examples in his soliloquies in which he 
attempts to reason himself into a belief of his own suspicions. 

And first as to the possibility of the fact : — 

" Affection, thy intention stabs the centre : 
Thou dost make possible things not so held, 
Communicat'st with dreams — 
With what 's unreal thou co-active art 
And folio w'st nothing. Then 't is very credent 
Thou may'st co-join with something ; and thou dost, 
And that to the infection of my brains," etc. 

Act I. Sc. 2. 

On the question whether such a fact as he suspects has or has 
not ever taken place, will or will not ever be done, he thus sup- 
ports his surmises : — 

" There have been, 
Or I am much deceiv'd, cuckolds ere now ; 
And many a man there is even at this present, etc. 
. . . Nay, there 's comfort in 't 



134 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

Whiles other men have gates and those gates opened 
As mine, against their will. Should all despair 
That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind 
Would hang* themselves, etc. 

Be it concluded 
No barricado," etc. 

Act I. Sc. 2. 

" The difference of enthymemes," says Aristotle, " is consider- 
able, some being general or applicable to all subjects alike ; others 
special or peculiar to certain arts and faculties. The first or 
general forms of arguments are called topics or places or ele- 
ments.^ Book I. ch. ii. § 20, 21; Book II. ch. xxii. 

These topics answer to that subdivision of the Art of Invention 
which Bacon terms " the invention of arguments." 

" Topical invention," he says, " is general or particular. The 
general is so diligently treated in the common logic that we need 
not dwell upon it." De Aug. Book V. ch. iii. 

He therefore gives no examples ; but these topics or general 
forms of argument applicable alike to all subjects are necessarily 
the same in all treatises of rhetoric, and therefore for the expla- 
nation of the numerous instances of them which the play contains 
and which renders it copiously illustrative of " the invention of 
arguments" Aristotle's work will be cited. 

For instance : " One element of enthymemes is derivable from 
contraries, for we should consider whether the contrary quality 
be inherent in the contrary subject, doing away the argument 
grounded thereon ; and if it be inherent, founding one thereon 
ourselves ; as it is in the Messenian oration." If war be the 
cause of our present troubles, of course we shall put ourselves 
right with the return of peace. Book II. ch. xxiii. § 1. 
Leontes reasons precisely in the same way : — 

" Nor night nor day, no rest : it is but weakness 
To bear the matter thus ; mere weakness, if 
The cause were not in being ; part of the cause 
She, the adulteress . . . 

Say, she were gone, 
Given to the fire, a moiety of my rest 
Might come to me again." 

Act II. Sc. 2. 

Another element is derived from relatives : — 
" If to command be just, so is the having executed the com- 
mand." Book II. ch. xxiii. § 3. 






THE WINTER'S TALE. 135 

This form of argument is used by Hermione in reply to Leon- 
tes' charge of her having loved Polyxenes : — 

" A love, even such, 
So and no other as yourself commanded : 
Which not to have done, I think, had been in me 
Both disobedience and ingratitude 
To you and toward your friend." 

Act III. Sc. 2. 

Another element is derivable from the relations of greater and 
less, or the argument a fortiori, for instance. " If not even the 
gods know everything, hardly, I should suppose, do men" for it 
is to say that if the quality be not inherent in that which would 
more naturally possess it, then is it evident that in that which 
would less naturally possess it, it is not inherent. Book II. 
ch. xxiii. § 4. 

This is the same form of argument as that which would prove 
that an action, which is not expedient though supported by exam- 
ples, is still less expedient when supported by none, as in the 
following : — 

" If I could find example 
Of thousands that had struck anointed kings 
And flourish 'd after, I 'd not do it ; but since 
Nor brass nor stone nor parchment bears not one, 
Let villainy itself forswear 't." 

Act I. Sc. 2. 

And the argument a minori, that " he assaults his neighbour, 
who even does so to his father," is derived from the element, if 
the less probability exist so does also the greater. 

This is the argument used by Leontes, when after enumerating 
the signs of love between the Queen and Polyxenes, he asks : — 

" Is this nothing ? 
Why, then, the world and all that 's in H is nothing," etc. 

Act I. Sc. 4. 

And again, by parity of reasoning, where it is said, " And is 
thy father to be pitied in that he has lost his children and is not 
in truth iEneas who has lost his noble offspring? " 

This element gives form to an argument of Polyxenes : — 

" Reason my son 
Should choose himself a wife ; but as good reason 
The father (all whose joy is nothing else 
But fair posterity) should hold sonic counsef 
In such a business. " 

Act IV. Sc. 3 



136 THE WINTER'S TALE. 



ting 



Another element is deduced from assertions made respecting 
yourself retorted upon your adversary. Book II. eh. xxiii. § 7. 
Thus Paulina answers the king : — 

" Leontes. A nest of traitors .' 

Antigonus. I am none by this good light. 
Paulina. Xor I, nor any 

But one that's here, and that 's himself, for he 
The sacred honor of himself his queen's, 
His hopeful son's, his babe's, betrays to slander, 
"Whose sting is sharper than the sword's,''' etc. 

Act H. Sc. 3. 

Another place is from definition, in which form of argument 
inferences are deduced, after having defined and ascertained the 
question.'* Book II. ch. xxiii. £ 8. 

" Leontes. I 11 have thee burn'd. 

Paulina. I care not ; 

It is an heretic that makes the flre, 
Xot she which burns in it. I ? 11 not call you tyrant ; 
But this most cruel usage of your queen. 
(Xot able to produce more accusation 
Than your own weak-hing'd fancy), something savors 
Of tyranny and will ignoble make you, 
Yea. scandalous to the world" 

Act IE Sc. 3. 

Another element is deducible from the number of senses in 
which a word may be taken. Book II. ch. xxiii. § 9. 
Of this, the Clown gives a comic instance : — 

" Clown. There 's no other way but to tell the king she 's a changeling and 
none of your flesh and blood. She being none of your flesh and blood, your flesh 
and blood has not offended the king ; and so, your flesh and blood is not to be 
punished by him:' Act IV. Sc. 3. 

Another element is derivable from a former decision of the 
same or similar question, especially if the wise or good so decide, 
or those contrary to whom it is not becoming to decide : for in- 
stance, a god or father or teacher, happen so to have decided. 
Book II. ch. xxiii. ^ 12. 

The question in the play is whether Leontes, notwithstanding 
the prediction of the oracle, ought to marry again for the sake of 
leaving an heir to the throne. Paulina thus replies to the argu- 
ment of the lords : — 

% "Tis your counsel 

My lord should to the heavens be contrary ; 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 137 

Oppose against their wills. [To Leontes.] Care not for issue • 
The crown will find an heir. Great Alexander 
Left his to the worthiest : so his successor 
Was like to be the best." 

Act V. Sc. 1. 

Another element arises from the enumeration of parts, and an 
instance occurs in the Socrates of Theodectes. " Towards what 
temple hath he been guilty of impiety ? whom of the gods hath 
he not honoured?" Book II. ch. xxiii. § 13. 

Of this form of enthymeme, Autolycus favors us with an ex- 
ample : — 

" Shepherd. Are you a courtier, an 't like you, sir ? 

Aut. Whether it like me or no, I am a courtier. See'st thou not the air 
of the court in these enfoldmgs ? hath ' not my gait in it the measure of the 
court ? receives not thy nose court-odor from me ? reflect I not on thy base- 
ness court-contempt ? Think'st thou for that I insinuate or toze from thee 
thy business, I am, therefore, no courtier? I am courtier cap-a-peV' Act IV. 
Sc. 3. 

Another occurs where we want to exhort or dissuade respecting 
two propositions and those opposed to each other ; for instance, 
a priestess was endeavoring to prevent her son from becoming a 
public speaker, because, said she, " If on the one hand you speak 
what is just, men will hate you; if what is unjust, the gods" 
" Here then it might be retorted, therefore you ought to become 
a public speaker, for if you speak what is just the gods will love 
you ; if what is unjust, men." Book II. ch. xxiii. § 15. 

This is the dilemma (a part of which is the argument a fortiori 
previously quoted) in which Camillo finds himself : — 

" What case stand I in f I must be the poisoner 
Of good Polyxenes ; and my ground to do 't 
Is the obedience to a master, one 
Who in rebellion with himself will have 
All that are his so too : To do this deed, 
Promotion follows. If I could find example 
Of thousands that had struck anointed kings 
And flourished after, I 'd not do it ; but since 
Nor brass nor stone nor parchment bears not one, 
Let villainy itself forswear 't. I must 
Forsake the court : to do % or no, is certain 
To me a break-neck." 

Act L So. 2. 

That is, If I do this deed, the king will reward, but the gods will 



138 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

punish me ; if I do it not, the gods will reward, but the king 
punish me. 

Another element which may be resorted to is from assuming a 
possible end as the real one ; as that insinuation in the Ajax of 
Theodectes " that Diomed chose Ulysses not as any compliment, 
but in order that his attendant might at the same time be his 
inferior.*' For it is very possible that he did so on this account. 
Book II. ch. xxiii. § 20. 

Thus Leontes attributes the flight of Camillo not to his own 
threats in case he did not poison Polyxenes, but to his being a 
confederate with him : — 

" Camillo was his help, his pander : 
There 's a plot against my life, my crown : 
All 's true that is mistrusted : that false villain 
Whom I employed was pre-emplof d by him" 

Act II. Sc. 1. 

Another is the consideration of the motives which stimulate or 
retard men and the objects with a view to which they both act 
and avoid. Book II. ch. xxiri. § 21. 

Thus Leontes attempts to persuade Camillo of his sincerity and 
of the justice of his charges against the Queen : — 

" Dost think I am so muddy, so unsettled, 
To appoint myself in this vexation ? sully 
The purity and whiteness of my sheets, 
Which to preserve is sleep, which being spotted 
Is goads, thorns, nettles, tails o' wasps ? 
Give scandal to the blood of the prince, my son, 
Who I do think is mine and love as mine, 
Without ripe moving to H ? Would I do this ? 
Could man so blench ? " 

Act I. Sc. 2. 

Another element refutative is the consideration of contradic- 
tions : if there occur any contradiction under all the circum- 
stances of time, conduct, sayings, and the like (Book II. ch. 
xxiii. § 23), as in the following answer of Leontes to Paulina's 
charge of his being a tyrant : — 

" Were I a tyrant, 
Where were her life ? she durst not call me so, 
If she did know me one. Away with her." 

Act II. Sc. 3. 

Another, applicable to those idio have been calumniated, or who 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 139 

appear so, whether men or actions, is the explaining the cause of 
the mistaken notion, for there is some circumstance on account 
of which it appears to be the case. Book II. ch. xxiii. § 24. 

This form of enthymeme is used by Hermione to refute the 
inferences drawn from her intimacy with Polyxenes : — 

" For Polyxenes, 
With whom I am accus'd, I do confess 
I lov'd him as in honor he requir'd 
With such a kind of love, as might become 
A lady like me," etc. 

Act III. Sc. 2. 

Another, which occurs when anything anomalous to former 
acts is about to be done, is the considering them both in connec- 
tion. Book II. ch. xxiii. § 27. 

By this formula Paulina confutes the assertions of the court- 
poet respecting the unequaled beauty of Perdita : — 

" Gent. She 's the most peerless piece of earth, I think, 
That e'er the sun shone bright on. 
Paul. O Hermione, 

As every present time doth boast itself 
Above a better gone, so must thy grave 
Give way to what 's seen now. Sir, you yourself 
Have said and writ so (but your writing now 
Is colder than that theme), ' She had not been, 
Nor was not to be equaVd ; ' — thus your verse 
Flow'd with her beauty once ; J t is shrewdly ebVd, 
To say you have seen a better." 

Act V. Sc. 1. 

Another (apparent) enthymeme arises from asserting that as a 
logical property which is not so (Book II. ch. xxii. § 7), as in 
the answer of Polyxenes, who had been asserting the innocence 
of Leontes and himself in boyhood : — 

" Hermione. By this we gather 

You have tripped since. 

Pol. O my most sweet lady, 

Temptations have since been born to us ; for 

In those unfledg'd days was my wife a girl ; 

Your precious self had not then cross' d the eyes 

Of my young my play-fellow. 

Her. Grace to boot ! 

Of this make no conclusion ; lest you say 

Your queen and I are devils." 

Act I. Sc. 2. 



140 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

The foregoing passages which exemplify so many varied forms 
of general arguments (more than half of the whole number 
enumerated by Aristotle being applied to the questions of the 
play) render the piece illustrative of that branch of the Art of 
Judgment, termed by Bacon "Me invention of arguments :" they, 
with others not cited, also appertain to the Art of Ehetoric. and 
give to the style of the play a thoroughly enthymematic and 
argumentative cast : so much so as to make the piece from begin- 
ning to end an example of the deductive method wherein the 
proofs and demonstrations depend upon the syllogism. 

These " topics " or general forms of arguments being all drawn 
from Aristotle, it will, perhaps, be alleged that if any correspond- 
ence exists between them and passages of the play, such corre- 
spondence, if it is of any weight as evidence whatever, and even 
if it can be assumed that it cannot be found to exist to the same 
extent in any other play, proves only that the writer of Tlie 
TT inter s Tale was acquainted with Aristotle's works. Unques- 
tionably so. if there were no other probabilities to be considered: 
but it must be remembered that these general forms of argument 
depending on the laws of the mind and not on the subject to 
which they are applied, must be the same in all rhetorical works, 
and that, as Bacon says, "they are so diligently treated!' that he, 
writing generally of the Art of Rhetoric (in his Divisions of the 
Sciences ). did not think it at all necessary to specify them in 
detail. Had he done so. he would have been obliged to make a 
list virtually the same as Aristotle's ; and it is very possible that 
the writer of the play, even were he professedly attempting to 
exemplify the invention of arguments (as one of Bacon's divi- 
sions) might have availed himself of Aristotle's enumeration as 
convenient and suited to his purpose. 

But whether by accident or design, a large number of these 
" topics " or " elements " are in the play, and they can properly be 
taken to elucidate Bacon's doctrine. 

According to Bacon. " there are and can be only two ways of 
searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the 
senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these 
principles the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, 
proceeds to judgment and discovery of middle axioms : and this 
way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses 
and particulars rising by gradual and unbroken ascent, so that 






THE WINTER'S TALE. 141 

it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true 
way, but as yet untried." Nov. Org. Book I. Aph. 19. 

These are respectively the Deductive and Inductive methods : 
the first dependent for its proofs on argument, reasoning, and 
logic ; the latter on experience. 

The conclusions arrived at by the first method are called by 
Bacon anticipations, as being hasty and premature ; they are 
mere presumptions, and do not rise to the rank of established 
truths. But however unavailing they may be for discovering the 
secrets of nature, they are serviceable in all civil business, for, as 
Bacon says " in sciences founded on opinion and dogmas the use 
of anticipations and logic is good, for in them the object is to 
command assent, not to master the thing." Nov. Org. Book I. 
Aph. 29. 

Of such anticipations or presumptions are the common opinions 
prevalent among men, the greater number of which are adopted 
without examination, and though regarded as truths in the gen- 
eral usage of the world, do not rise above probability. It is from 
this source that the rhetorician and all who attempt to persuade 
or accuse or praise, or the contrary, draw the propositions which 
form the premises of their arguments. 
• The latter or inductive method is that on which Bacon founds 
his Experimental Philosophy or Interpretation of Nature. This 
system is exemplified in Cymbeline, where the truth is arrived at 
by induction, and at the same time the fallacy of judgments and 
inferences derived from signs is exposed : the former method is 
that of the ancient and scholastic philosophies, which are profes- 
sorial and disputatious in their nature, aim at forming sects, and 
exist rather as furnishing opportunities for eloquence than for the 
discovery of such truth as can benefit man's estate. Nov. Org. 
Book I. Aph. 7. 

Of this method in practice, The Winter's Tale is an exhibition, 
for in it, in the absence of all direct evidence, men are repre- 
sented as forming their conclusions by inferences drawn syllogis- 
tically from signs and probabilities, — of which Leontes is a 
conspicuous instance, — and throughout the discussions in the 
dialogue of fhe piece is exemplified the kind of proof and demon- 
stration used by those rhetorical schools of philosophy which 
battled only for opinions, leaving all really useful discoveries to 
Time and Chance (vide De Aug. Book V. oh. ii.) : even as the 



142 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

discovery of the birth and parentage of Perdita and the conse- 
quent fulfillment of the oracle, — on which the fortunes of all the 
characters are made to turn, — are brought about by no direct 
investigation on the part of those interested, but solely by the 
chances and changes of Time. 

And as an instance of the fidelity with which this play-writer 
adheres in the selection of his rhetorical figures to his subject, 
the passage may be cited in which the effect of Perdita's ideal 
beauty is described by an allusion to the old system of philoso- 
phizing that aimed at proselyting and the formation of sects. 

" This is a creature 
Would she begin a sect, might quench the zeal 
Of all professors else : make proselytes 
Of who she but bid follow" 

Act V. Sc. 1. 



According to Bacon, poetry is " feigned history,'* for he passes 
by ** satire, elegy, epigram, odes, etc.. and turns them over to the 
arts of speech and under the name of poetry treats of nothing 
more than imaginary history." De Aug. Book II. ch. xiii. 

It is obvious that Hie Wilder s Tale is an imaginary history, 
and it is equally clear that it is intended as an imitation of a work 
of poetic art; it therefore falls directly under the definition which 
Bacon gives of poetry as "feigned history.'' In the language of 
the piece itself, it is "a history devised and played to take spec- 
tators." 

The glow of poetic enthusiasm, which expresses itself in bold 
and figurative language, is imitated — mechanically, as it were — 
by the free use of amplification and hyperbole : and we cannot 
too much admire and wonder at that firm hand and unerring judg- 
ment which are never betrayed into overcharging the exaggera- 
tion, and thus dropping into bathos and bombast. Take as an 
instance the description of the Statue, which turns on the notions 
of likeness and time : u a piece many years in doing and now 
newly performed by that rare Italian master Julio Romano, who 
had he himself eternity, and could put breath into his work, w r ould 
beguile nature of her custom, so perfectly is he her ape ; he so 
near to Ilermione hath done Hermione* that they say one would 
speak to her and stand in hope of answer : thither with all greedi- 
ness of affectum they are gone." 

In the following description of Perdita's grief at hearing of 






THE WINTER'S TALE. 143 

her mother's death, the hyperbole is carried to the extremest limit 
of good taste. 

" Till from one sign of dolor to another, she did with an * alas,' I would fain 
say bleed tears, for I am sure my heart wept blood ! Who was most marble there 
changed color • some swooned, all sorrowed : if all the world could have seen it, 
the woe had been universal." 

Much of the curio sa felicitas that marks the diction and meta- 
phor of this piece cannot be here touched upon ; but since it is 
assumed that The Winter s Tale is a work which displays the 
characteristics of Shakespearian art in a marked and emphatic 
manner, and as one of those characteristics is the constant repeti- 
tion, under various forms, of the opposite conceptions involved in 
the dominant idea, thus imparting an inner life and a surpassing 
unity of effect to a piece, it will be necessary to show, at the risk 
of repeating some few particulars, how this is the case with The 
Winter's Tale. 

The play announces by its title that it is a work of art ; and it 
views life as an art ; but the aim of art is the creation of the 
beautiful, and a view of life is therefore taken of which the guid- 
ing principle is " the good and fair," or say Honor, the ornament 
and grace of life. Honor lies in the speeches and judgments of 
men, and is but a name for that good opinion awarded to the 
practice of love and truth. It is the object of true art to form a 
man of integrity, a well-rounded whole, by assimilating character 
to the idea of moral goodness. All the characters of the piece 
are measured by this standard, and in proportion as they success- 
fully imitate or copy this model do they win honor and beautify 
life. 

But the virtues that make up the moral ideal are those which 
unite men and may be considered principles of unity, while the 
selfish desires and affections separate men and may be consid- 
ered principles of division. Therefore throughout Shakespearian 
tragedy and comedy, resting as they do on the love and truth 
that are the moral life of the world and the source of all rules 
that regulate human conduct, unity and division are fundamental 
conceptions. • These conceptions are modified in each particular 
play according to the relations represented or the subject treated 
of. The Winter's Tale, being a typical piece, must take for its 
organic idea the moral ideal itself, but the conceptions of unity 



144 THE WES-TEE'S TALI 

and division are modified (though but slightly ) by the special 
view taken of life as an art. The two essential qualities of a 
k of imitative art are likeness (i. e., life spirit, truth to nature) 
in the parts and the union or unity of the parts in one harmo- 
nious whole. The opposite of likeness is difference^ and the oppo- 
is « paration : therefore likeness and difference, 
n and separation* are the continually recurring conceptions, 
which are held in aesthetic balance throughout the piece. 

It should be noted, however, that as the drama represents 
human life and consequently human error, the notions that spring 
from the principles of division are those which generally give the 
key-note to a piece. Thus in this play, the reader is impressed 

ii a sense of difference and separation, and this no doubt has 
led to the supposition that the piece is defective in unit 
defect being attributed to the violation of the unities of time and 
place: whereas this is the very impression the poet intend- : 
convey, it seemingly being his design to exemplify his own method 
by hiding, under a form that extravagantly violates the mere me- 
chanical unities, a moral or spiritual unity, by which all differ- 
ences are finally reconciled, and all the scattered strands of the 
story drawn into one knot. 

I simplest form of a work made up of 'parts united in one 
le is that of two parts constituting a pair. The poet, there- 
fore, assumes a pair as a type of likeness and union, opposed to 
which are difference, separation* etc. 

The principles of union and separation are seen in full play in 
the action of the piece. The characters fall into pa::- ifl Leon- 
tes and Polyxenes. a pair of friends ; Florizel and Perdita, a pair 
of \ Leontes and Hermione. a married pair : likewise An- 

tigonus and Paulina : Cleomenes and Dion, a pair of messengers ; 
B rpherd and son. a pair of clowns : Mopsa and Dorcas, a pair 
of rustic beauties or riv 

The notion of a -pair > : :^quently introduced directly, as 
.escription of the boyhood of himself and Leontes. 

*• v 1 frisk :' s 

And bleat tie one at Oe otker." 

der this head fall all allusions to what is jit, matched, suUa- 
A pair implies liken* deal or moraL Original and copy 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 145 

make a pair and involve necessarily the notions of parity, equal- 
ity, mutuality, reciprocity, etc., which are constantly recurring. 

Leontes sees in the likeness of Mamillius to himself a proof of 
his legitimacy ; and Paulina sees in the likeness of the babe to 
Leontes a similar proof ; and still another instance is the follow- 
ing:— 

" Your mother was most true to wedlock, prince ; 
For she did print your royal father off, 
Conceiving you : Were I but twenty-one 
Your father's image is so hit in you, 
His very air ; that I should call you brother, 
As I did him," etc. 

Act V. Sc. 1. 

The following phrases are so constructed as to introduce the 
notions of likeness, parity, equality, or repetition, for that which 
is repeated or done again is a copy or imitation. 

" Nine changes of the wafry star have been' 
The shepherd's note since first we left our throne 
Without a burden ; time as long again 
Could be filFd," etc. 

"But such a day to-morrow as to-day." 

" He makes a July's day short as December." 

" He that wears her like her medal 
About his neck, Bohemia — who — if I 
Had servants about me that bare eyes 
To see alike mine honor as their profits," etc. 

" Plainly as heaven sees earth and earth sees heaven." 

"Will take again your queen, as yours at first." 

" Your chang'd complexions are to me a mirror 
Which shows me mine chang'd too." 

" The most replenish' } d villain . . . were as much more villain." 

"Should a like language use to all degrees." 

" So long as nature 
Will bear up, so long I vow to use it.' 
10 



146 THE \yintkk\s TALE, 

u You have 
\.< little skill to fear as I bave purpose 
To pul you to 't." 

"There ia wo< half a kiss to choose 
Who loves another best. 91 

u I will make In r />ortio/i BQUOl his.' 1 

* k And a<jain dors nothiiuj 

Hut what Ik- did, being childless.'* 

u It, is (is bitter upon thy tongue as in my thoughts.' 

u To bless the bed of majesty again 
With (i sweet fellow t<> 't. n 



"Our prince had pair' d well with this lord." 
4k He <//r.s- /<; ///r </</*//// when talk'd of." 



11 The Otfrfo for high and low \s (dike.'" 

11 Sou oto'd no 010110 fwiM than / tfo now" 

u Which sixteen winters cannot Mow away 
So many summu rs dry." 

. . . "Not these twenty years, 
So long could I 

S( :il .d by " — 

u Until you see ber dfa <t</oin, for then 

You //"// A< /■ doubli ." 

So too, in order to vary the form, parity, or equality is pro- 
duced by negativing the difference as 

M X<> less honest than von era mad." 

u Which no less adorns our gentry 
Than our parents' noble nanus." 

The Foregoing quotations, numerous as they arc, could easily 

be multiplied. The Statue secuc aloue would furnish a page or 
two of instances of Uk( n< 88 and its equivalents. 

In a work of art, unity is as important as likeness \ and the 
notion of unity will be a prevalent one in the diction and phrase- 
ologj of tin 1 piece. 






TIIIO WINTER'S TALK. 147 



Unity may be predicated of a single individual or of the many 
in one, or* of the one in many, or of a whole made up of parts, as 
in the ease of any theory, the facts of which are held together by 
a common principle. Circumstantial evidence, for instance;, rests 
on a theory, and is conclusive in proportion to the v/nity with 

which all the parts refer themselves to one and the same; pre- 
sumptive fact or mental conception. In the play, the evidence 
by which Perdita's birth and parentage are established is thus 

spoken of : — 

"2 Gent. lias the king Found his heir? 
\\ (J ant. Most true ; it" over truth were preynant by circumstance, : that 
whieh yon hear, you 'II swear you see, there is such unity in the proofs, l,he 
month', of (pieen Ilermione : her jewel about the neck of it : the tellers of A n- 
tiyonus, found with it, which they know to be his character : — the majesty of I he 
creature, in resemblance of the mother — the affection of nobleness which failure 
shows above her breed iny, — and many other evidences proclaim her with all 
certainty to he the king's daughter*" Act V. ttc. .'{. 

Unity is implied also in Singularity, which is affined with the 
ideal, for the ideal, or what is best or superlative, is single. 
Thus prominence and singularity are <;ivcn to some particular 
object by the separation and exclusion of all others of its kind. 

"There is no tonyue that moves, none, none i the world, 
So soon, as yours COllld move me." 

" Wishing all eyes blind 
With the pin and Wet f but theirs, theirs only." 

u Slavs, stars 
And all eyes else, dead coals." 

" No hearing ) no feeling, but my sir's song," 

" Even thou, that bast 
A heart so tender over it, take it benoe ; 

Even th0U, and none bul thOU," 

Unify, again, is expressed by distinguishing one of several 
hinds, as in the lines, — 

cc LiHeS Of all / i/nfs, 

The flower-de-luce being one." 
In the following, one is singled out of many as an example. 



148 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

" Yet shall the oracle 
Give rest to the minds of the others, such as he 
Whose ignorant credulity will not 
Come up to the truth." 

The ideal or superlative implies also the relation of one to all, 
which relation is thus expressed by Polyxenes' description of his 

" He 's all my exercise, my mirth, my matter : 
Now my sworn friend and then mine enemy ; 
My parasite, my soldier, statesman, ally 

The union of many in one, or the relation of one to all, is con- 
tained in the old Shepherd's sketch of his wife. 

" Fye, daughter ! when my old wife liv'd, upon 
This day, she was both pantler, butler, cook, 
Both dame and servant, welcomed all, served all • 
Would sing her song and dance her turn, now here 
At th' upper end o' the table, now in the middle ; 
On his shoulder, and his : her face o' fire 
With labor ; and the thing she took to quench it 
She would to each one sip." 

In the next, there is the relation of one to all through the super- 
lative. 

" But, of all, the burst 
And the ear-deafening voice of the oracle," etc. 

And to descend to minuter particulars — which have an inter- 
est as a proof of the amazing activity of the poet's mind — words 
may be adverted to, which are expressive of parts united in one 
whole, as "four-threes, one-three, by twos and threes, etc. Also 
compound terms, in which two or more words are blended into 
one, with a joint meaning, as rain-bow, love-songs, trot-my-dames, 
three-man-song-men, flower-de-luce ; foot-path, foot-man, horse-man, 
bearing-cloth, process-server, stretch-mouth'd, good-faced, crown- 
imperial, admirable-conceited, kiln-hole, tittle-tattle, table-book, 
horn-ring, and a host of others. 

Opposed to likeness, parity ', equality, union, etc., are difference, 
disjunction, separation, and other similar notions. The fable of a 
Shakespearian play takes its movement, as has been said, from a 
principle of disunion, for dramatic fables are pictures of crimes or 
vices which, of course, are violations of truth and goodness. And 
so it is with The Winter s Tale. The love that exists between 
the pair of kings and the happy state of feeling generally at the 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 149 

Court of Sicily are broken up and destroyed by the jealousy of 
Leontes, who suspects his wife and his friend of infidelity towards 
himself. He "puts between their holy looks his ill-suspicions," 
and engenders a discord that reaches all parties, who are at once 
disjoined and scattered, and a long period of time intervenes be- 
fore a return of love and trust heals the breach and reunites 
them. 

These notions of separation, disjunction, etc., have great influ- 
ence in shaping the figures and phraseology of the piece. 

And first, separation, or its equivalent, interval, is implied in 
the conception of Time, to which as the parent of truth Man in this 
play is portrayed as related. Of time no definite conception can 
be formed except as of intervals in a succession of thoughts or 
events ; of moments between thoughts ; of hours, days, or longer 
periods between events ; therefore under this head may be placed 
the very numerous allusions to time and the incidents universally 
associated with it ; these need not be specified, as they are too ob- 
vious to escape observation. 

Interval, however, is many times directly introduced as thus : — 

" I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, 
or that youth would sleep out the rest, for there is nothing in the 
between but wronging the ancientry," etc. 

" I lost a couple that 'twixt heaven and earth 
Might thus have stood, begetting wonder." 

" He had himself 
The lands and waters 'twixt your throne and his 
Measured to look upon you." 

Imitative of interval are inverted comparisons in which the 
thoughts appear to be separated and placed opposite to each 
other, as, — 

" The root of his opinion, which is as rotten 
As ever oak or stone was sound." 

" I will devise a death as cruel for thee 
As thou art tender to it." 

" She is us forward of her breeding, as 
She is i 9 the rear of our birth." 

" I low he glisters 
Thorough my rust ; and how his piety 
Does my deeds make the blacker !" 



150 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

Separation is also imitated in the style by the introduction of a 
large number of dilemmas and disjunctive propositions ; and 
these fall in also with the argumentative style of the piece. 

•• How say you ? 
: i By your dread verily 

-" em you shall 1 

u One of these two must be necessities 
Which then will speak : :.. : 
Or I 

" I pr'y thee darken not 
The mirth o ? the feast. Or I ".'. . my fair, 

f ther'i ■ for It 
Mine own nor :o any. if 

I be not thine." 

,; Though I with death and with 
Reward did threaten a:: -: him 

Xot doing it and 

,; I would not prize them 
Without her love ; for her employ them all : 
■\end them or condemn them to her service 

Or " : : : 

There are other like instances, but the foregoing are sufficient 
to show that the notions of separation, disjunction, etc. are both 
directly and indirectly made to pervade the piece. 

No analysis will be ottered of the diction, although it has some 
peculiar and curious features ; but it may be remarked, that as 
Honor depends upon truth and veracity, the personages of the 
piece are all engaged earnestly in maintaining their opiuions and 
assertions by evidence either of the senses, or of circumstances, or 
by logical proofs, arguments, aud persuasions. With t are 

associated words aud phrases referring to f -wearing, 

oaths, vows, attestations, affirming- denying, aud others. Manv 
phrases are also introduced by way of maxim or proverb, embody- 
ing the opinion of the world at large, or truths attested by the 
general experience of mankind or sayings commonly received and 
believed. Aud it ifl observable that so careful is this artist to 
preserve the aesthetic balance of the diction of his pieces that in- 
asmuch as swearing and oaths imply an imprecation, he throws 
into the dialogue a multitude of ejaculations, prayers, invocations, 
and petitions by way of offset, as •• Beseech you." " Pi: 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 151 

" Would that," " Be you blessed ; " " Happy star reign now," 
" The Higher Powers forbid," " Prosper you, sweet sir," " Jove 
afford you cause," and many others, some of them forming pas- 
sages of several lines. 

Imperfect and inadequate as is the foregoing analysis of the 
rhetoric of the piece (and under the head of rhetoric, the liberty 
is taken of grouping all that appertains to the verbal expression 
of the idea of the piece), it has yet been carried into more minute 
details than would have been thought necessary but for the prev- 
alent impression that The Winter s Tale, though a delightful 
drama and the work of a great genius, is nevertheless but a care- 
less dramatization of an old novel filled with ridiculous blunders 
and infractions of rule and wholly unworthy of the name of a 
work of art. The intent here is to show that this opinion is 
founded on a total misconception of the scope of the play ; that 
this dramatic legend is, in fact, an exquisite product of art, of 
which the very theme is Art ; that it is as finished in execution 
as it is beautiful in design, and that it required a grace of mind, 
a delicacy of taste, a mastery of language, and a poetic power and 
sympathy in the treatment of the subject that have rarely, if 
ever, been equaled ; nay more, it may be said to exemplify in a 
most marked manner a profound and original dramatic art, which 
by throwing aside the rules of a past and outworn age, vastly en- 
larges the poet's scope and power ; and in this respect it can be 
taken as an example of that kind of improvement to which Bacon 
looked forward in works of art, both mechanical and liberal, and 
of which he speaks in the Novum Organum, Book II. Aph. 31, 
as follows : — 

" Among Prerogative Instances I will put Instances of Power, 
which I call also Instances of the Wit or Hands of Man. These 
are the noblest and most consummate works in each art, exhibit- 
ing the ultimate perfection of it . . . starting from them we shall 
find an easier and nearer passage to new works hitherto unat- 
tempted. For if from an attentive contemplation of these a man 
pushes on his work with zeal and activity, he will infallibly either 
advance them a little further or turn them aside to something in 
the neighborhood or even apply and transfer them to so Die more 
noble use. 

"Nor is this all. But as by rare and extraordinary works of 
nature the understanding is excited and raised to the investigation 



152 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

and discovery of Forms capable of including them, so also is 
this done by excellent and wonderful works of Art, and that in a 
much greater degree, because the method of creating and construct- 
ing such miracles of art is in most cases plain, whereas in the 
miracles of nature it is generally obscure. But with these also 
we must use the utmost caution, lest they depress the understand- 
ing and fasten it, as it were, to the ground. 

" For there is danger lest the contemplation of such works of 
art, which appear to be the very summits and crowning points of 
human industry, may so astonish and bind and bewitch the under- 
standing with regard to them, that it shall be incapable of dealing 
with any other, but shall think that nothing can be done in that 
kind except by the same way in which these were done. . . 

" Whereas on the contrary this is certain, that the ways and 
means of achieving the effects and works hitherto discovered and 
observed are for the most part very poor things ; and that all 
power of a high order depends on Forms" 

By this aphorism, it appears that Bacon held that there was a 
strict analogy between the works of nature and the works of art 
(including the " liberal arts" of which poetry and the drama are 
members), and that in order to advance art still further, the great 
masterpieces should be studied with a view to the discovery of 
Forms capable of including them, and that in his opinion this dis- 
covery would not be difficult u because the method of creating 
and constructing such miracles of art is in most cases plain," and 
he adds " that the ways and means of achieving the effects and 
works hitherto discovered and observed are for the most part 
very poor things, and that all power of a high order depends on 
Forms" 

While this aphorism is supposed to apply mainly to the me- 
chanical arts, it also expressly mentions " the liberal arts as far 
as they deal with works," and thus includes the Fine Arts and 
the Drama ; with respect to which last, it may be considered a 
somewhat sweeping judgment of the superficial artistic methods 
that had prevailed until that period ; and indeed, it may be con- 
strued as meaning that in his judgment the masterpieces of the 
classic drama that relied for their artistic unity upon the observ- 
ance of the external unities of time, place, and action, were, as ex- 
emplars of constructive art and " in their ways and means of 
achieving effects, very poor things," and he would not have men 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 153 

•" think that nothing can be done except by the same way in which 
these were done" 

But what did Bacon mean by Forml Taking together all 
that he says by way of definition, a form or formal cause may be 
considered as the constitutive principle or indwelling law which 
determines the specific qualities or essential nature of a thing. 
It is the form which makes a thing what it is ; the schoolmen 
called it " the quiddity," and Bacon himself speaks of it as ipsis- 
sima res, the very thing itself, and says that " the thing differs 
from the form no otherwise than as the apparent differs from the 
real or the external from the internal." Nov. Org. Book I. Aph. 
51, Book II. Aph. 2, 17, et als. 

The form, then, of a drama must, according to this doctrine, be 
an idea or formative principle that rules and shapes every part of 
the work, and of which the story, characters, incidents, composition, 
and diction are but vehicles and exponents. An idea of some 
kind must necessarily lie at the bottom of every work of true art, 
but in most cases this idea, instead of being an active and forma- 
tive principle that correlates all parts of the work, is only some 
general conception that serves to connect the parts in a loose 
manner without effecting any very strict union among them ; in 
such cases the parts are not absolutely of a common growth ; but 
an idea that answers to the Baconian form must be constructive 
and organic, and cause the work to exist as a product of itself, 
and must, as an inward shaping energy, realize itself outward 
in the play. 

From The Winter's Tale it is fairly inferable that the writer 
of it had followed the same line of study and thought which 
led Bacon to suggest an examination of works of (literary) art, 
with a view to the discovery of the " Forms capable of including 
them," inasmuch as he carries Bacon's advice fully into practice, 
and unrestricted by " the ways and means of achieving effects and 
works hitherto discovered and observed " (which we may fairly 
suppose included the dramatic rules and unities of the Greeks), 
he wrote plays in utter disregard of classical canons, whenever 
the exigencies of the plot required it ; relying for the artistic 
effect of his work and its sufficiency to satisfy the sense of beauty 
upon the unity produced by making it the development of a 
"form;" and upon examining the plays, we find that they — 
or, at least, the later ones — are each comprehended under the 






154 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

" form " or idea of some particular mode of literary expression or 
what is commonly called a literary form, being that style or 
mode of treatment which usage has assigned to certain classes of 
subjects, — of which history, biography, travels, the novel, fable, 
allegory, essay, and others are examples. The idea underlying 
each of these different modes of literary expression is, according 
to Bacon's mode of terming it, its "form," which, when stated 
with precision, is a definition of the end or purpose of such 
writing, as, for instance, the end of history is to form a judgment 
of men by experience, and this fully and precisely expressed is 
its "form," which, when taken as a constructive principle for a 
drama, — as it is in Cymbeline, — makes the piece a history, of 
which the characters have for their rule and guide in life the 
use of experience in judging of men's natures and conduct, which 
rule when they depart from they fall into error and often into 
ruin; or, to take the case of a dialogue or discourse, the end of 
which is the maintenance of propositions by proofs, and this is 
its "form," which, when adopted as the organic idea of a play, 
— as in Much Ado it is, — imparts to it the features of a dis- 
course, in which the opinions and conduct of the characters are 
more or less conformable to reason according as they are moulded 
and influenced by conclusions supported by valid proofs ; or 
again, the end and purpose of a fable is to teach moral truth by 
symbols, and such is its law or " form," which may be violated 
by giving more importance to the symbol than to the reality ; 
and in the case of a play built up on this " form " — like Lear, 
for instance — its persons will exhibit their affinities with the 
world of sense or of soul in proportion as they adjudge the symbol 
or the reality best worthy of their affections; and so with other 
literary forms adopted as constructive principles of plays. 

This doctrine of Bacon's of evolving plays as works of art 
from " forms " is, after all, but an extension by a bold and com- 
manding genius of the usual division of plays into tragedv and 
comedy, under the idea of one or the other of which it is gener- 
ally supposed that all plays can be included; but although these 
two opposite modes of representing human actions point especially 
to man's relations to sin or to folly, out of which respectively 
spring these two kinds of the modern drama, as generic styles of 
literary art (of which the "forms " or ideas are specially devel- 
oped in Hamlet and Twelfth Night), they are very far from ex- 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 155 

hausting the many ends and aspects of life, which are each 
capable of furnishing matter for a distinct mode of literary ex- 
pression, and of which " the form " can be taken as the organic 
law for a drama. Good old Polonius gives us " tragedy, comedy, 
history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, . . . scene 
individable and poem unlimited " (in which two last mentioned he 
evidently alludes to plays which have unity and those which have 
none) ; but though Polonius's pedantry is over-nice in its distinc- 
tions, the passage is an indication that the writer of it recognized 
many other kinds of dramatic writing than tragedy and comedy, 
for besides history and pastoral, there may be added not only the 
literary forms mentioned above, but also the parable, masque, farce, 
satire, and various others, among which is the present instance, a 
winter's tale. All these have each its own style and its own 
moral purpose ; and plays which are developments of such literary 
forms will present that phase of life and that department of 
thought and feeling of which the true ends are defined and ex- 
pressed in what Bacon would technically term its "form." This 
will account for the peculiar stamp which each play possesses, and 
for that difference of manner which is so great that it has led 
to conjectures that the plays were by different hands. Of course, 
their unity as works of art is from the same source. And it 
would seem that towards the close of his career, and after he had 
fully matured his method, he wrote a play apparently for the pur- 
pose of showing how thoroughly unity can be imparted to a work 
by a " form " or idea in spite of the grossest violations of the 
three dramatic unities, — in fact, making such violation con- 
tribute to the effect of his piece. And as this method points to 
a direct parallel, in an important respect, between the play and 
Bacon's views, it will be set forth in a brief summary, although it 
may involve some particulars already touched upon. 

The poet takes as a constructive principle the " form " or idea 
of "a winter's tale," which, according to Bacon, falls under the 
head of poesy or feigned history, and is a work of imitative art, 
and as such requires likeness to nature in its parts and unity as a 
whole ; but a winter's tale is, on account of the supposed igno- 
rance of its narrator, a rude art, and this rudeness reappears in 
the dramatic copy as a violation of the " unities." Yet this irreg- 
ularity is not a blemish in the play ; on the contrary, it is a 
beauty, inasmuch as thereby the play reflects all the more faith- 



156 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

fully the spirit of its original ; just as any homely, prosaic, or 
defective object, such as a blasted tree or a ruined hovel, may 
become picturesque and beautiful in a painting from the truth 
and spirit with which its idea is executed. But the drama being 
a picture of life, a play which embodies the idea of a work of 
art, however irregular, must make the rule of art the rule of 
life, that is, the beau-ideal or that perfect model of goodness and 
beauty, by copying which characters and manners are invested 
with dignity, grace, courtesy, and a sense and love of honor, — 
as is seen in Hermione, Perdita, Florizel, Paulina, and others ; 
while the neglect of such rule is apparent in rude and violent 
manners, in falsehood, impudence, dishonesty, which are con- 
spicuous in Leontes (temporarily) and Autolycus. 

It may be observed in passing, that so marked in each kind 
are these opposite lines of conduct and manners, that they fur- 
nish good examples of the precepts laid down by Bacon with 
respect to Wisdom of Behaviour. 

As a copy of the external form, however beautiful, is but a 
lifeless mask unless it be vivified by the spirit or idea, the poet 
satisfies this requirement with regard to his characters in the 
portrayal of their deeper natures, from which their manners 
spring. Of the desires and passions that prompt to action, there 
are two classes, one affined more nearly with the sensual, the 
other with the spiritual, side of our nature. To the latter class 
belong the feelings which have their root in pride and resentment, 
and which evince spirit and natural fire, such as the love of 
honor, the dread of shame ; the preference of death to disgrace ; 
the sense of superiority, indignation at wrong, courage, jealousy, 
revenge. These qualities are the prominent traits of the different 
personages of the piece, and they are carried to the highest pitch 
by being coupled with an ardor, an eagerness, a vehemency of 
mind, which renders the expression of them unusually animated 
and spirited. The two most highly colored pieces of painting 
in the play are the jealousy of Leontes and the zeal of the hot- 
tempered Paulina. But jealousy and zeal are but different forms 
of a natural heat of mind, and, in fact, but different forms of 
the same word, the etymon of which signifies to boil, to be hot. 
The same ardor is exhibited in the grief of Mamillius at his 
mother's disgrace, in the fervor of Florizel, in the devotion of 
Antigonus, in the rivalry of Mopsa and Dorcas, in the enthusiasm 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 157 

excited by the pedler's songs, in the indefatigable pursuit of his 
vocation by Autolycus. Even the high-minded Hermione, who 
scorns to yield to tears, feels " an honorable grief that burns 
worse than tears drown." 

And thus the poet takes as the basis of his characters those 
qualities that evince the life and spirit of the soul, augments 
their ardor and vehemence, giving 

" To every power a double power 
Above their functions and their offices," 

and lifts the whole to that ideal plane which, in an imitation of 
a work of imagination, is assumed as the ordinary level of human 
action. In this way his picture is filled with life, fire, spirit, and 
animation, which fully meet the requirements in this respect of 
the " form "of his piece. 

The incidents of the play, also, flow from the same idea, for 
beauty of conduct has its practical and every-day example in the 
man of honor and veracity, who both scrupulously guards his 
own word and refrains from the slightest unfounded statement 
that can impeach the honor of others. The accusation of Her- 
mione by Leontes, on which turn the first three acts, is a gross 
breach of this rule, as on the other hand the fidelity of Florizel 
to Perdita, which determines the action of the rest of the piece, 
is a beautiful instance of " that honesty and honor that endures 
all weathers." 

Moreover, the beau-ideal, or " the good and fair," is the stand- 
ard of morals and manners in a world of the highest breeding, 
or a world taken at its best. Such a world finds its representa- 
tives in the most honored and honorable class, with whom high 
worth and fine manners are habitual characteristics, and who set 
the highest possible estimate on a reputation for an unblemished 
life and decorous deportment. But reputation lies in the speeches 
of men which, whether true or false, are testimony, and as such 
impart no knowledge of a higher degree than opinion ; on which 
account reputation, in cases of gross detraction, can, in the ab- 
sence of all direct knowledge, rely for its vindication only upon 
revelations of the truth made by Chance and Time. 

And here, again, it may be observed that this conception ena- 
bles the dramatist to make his play an image of these inefficient 
theoretical systems of philosophy (denounced by Bacon) which, 



158 THE WINTER'S TALE. 






neglecting experimental knowledge, are built up by argument on 
mere opinion, — like the suspicions of Leontes, for instance, 
which have not a single fact to stand on, — - and leave all useful 
discoveries of truth to Time. 

The essence of testimony is veracity ; and so jealous are men 
of their honor that they seek to support their statements by oaths, 
vows, adjurations, and other like means of effecting credit and 
persuasion, including proofs by direct evidence, by hearsay, and 
by reasoning, which last are commonly used in the attack and 
defense of character or to give weight to opinion and counsel. 
Throughout the play these conceptions are continually recurring, 
the whole dialogue being argumentative, thus uniting art with 
philosophy, for so numerous and various are the passages of this 
kind that they furnish apt and admirable examples of the rules 
of oratory and persuasion as laid down in the art of rhetoric. 

The " form " of the piece, moreover, both on its moral and its 
artistic side, flows into the composition, and infuses into every 
part of its rhetoric and diction its constituent conceptions of 
honesty, honor, integrity, truth, grace, propriety, beauty, and also 
likeness, spirit, life, unity, totality, and others, with their corre- 
sponding opposites, giving shape not only to the more promi- 
nent features of the style, to metaphors, similes, phrases, and 
descriptions, but even to single words and particles, to oaths, 
ejaculations, interjections, and adverbs. 

The foregoing summary omits many points in the development 
of the idea, but it is perhaps sufficient to show the similarity 
between Bacon's suggestions and the poet's practice. It shows a 
method which is probably as close an imitation of the processes 
of Nature in the formation of an organism as it is possible to 
effect by the instrumentality of language ; and as a Baconian 
"form" or inward cause manifests itself in the various and spe- 
cific qualities of a thing, and is the thing, differing from it only 
as the real differs from the apparent, so an idea of a play is the 
play ; it is ipsissima res or the very thing itself, and differs from 
it only as the soul or spirit differs from the outward body, which 
is its product and manifestation. 

By this method of working, a unity of effect is produced so all 
pervading that the poet is rendered independent of the measure- 
ments of time, which he lengthens or shortens at pleasure, as the 
needs of his action demand, — " such tricks hath strong imagina- 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 159 

tion," — and so deep is this unity felt to be that modern criticism 
no longer regards " the unities " as indispensable nor denies that 
the Shakespearian plays are works of true art. But the case was 
far different three centuries ago ; then the classical rules were 
held sacred and inviolable, and he was a man of bold and inno- 
vating genius indeed who presumed to question the authority of 
Aristotle in either logic or art. But Bacon did the one and 
" Shakespeare "did the other. 

In all which the poet clearly shows that he holds with Bacon 
that " man, if he pushes on his works with zeal and activity, will 
infallibly advance them a little further," and also that he can 
"apply and transfer them to some more noble use," as is done in 
this case, by rendering them models that may be taken for the 
illustration of philosophy. 

Of the masterpieces, termed by Bacon " instances of the Wit 
and Hand of Man" there is mention of one in the play as fol- 
lows, in which also it will be observed there is the notion of like- 
ness and of the separation of a thing from others by reason of its 

excellence : — 

" As she liv'd peerless, 
So her dead likeness, I do well believe, 
Excels whatever yet you looked upon 
Or hand of man hath done. Wherefore I keep it 
Lonely, apart. But here it is : prepare 
To see the life as lively mocked as ever 
Still sleep mock'd death." 

Act V. Sc. 3. 

This poet was evidently a great worker in words. He had 
supreme dominion over every form of expression, understood the 
dramatic effect and moral force of each different turn of phrase, 
and ran his thought into any mould he pleased, and that, too, with- 
out loss of grace or felicity of expression, and even when by the 
electric fire of passion, the word and the thought are fused into a 
common and indivisible amalgam, it is done in strict pursuance of 
a rigid method. So true, moreover, is his language to nature, 
that it will bear any weight of emphasis the most powerful elocu- 
tion can lay upon it. 

The writer of these plays is generally thought of first as a poet 
and then as a philosopher, but perhaps if he should be regarded 
as a philosopher first and then as a poet, that is, a philosopher 
who used a creative imagination and transcendent powers of 



160 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

fancy and language for the purpose of clothing in poetic forms 
the abstract principles of his science of man, we might give a 
nearer guess at his meaning. He had his lyrical faculties com- 
pletely at command. He left it to minor poets to be possessed by 
the god and with foaming mouth to utter oracles for the delight 
and instruction of mankind. He, too, can raise a storm of pas- 
sion, as well as any; he can flash the lightning and roll the 
thunder and fill the whole heavens with coruscations and meteors 
of wit, but behind it all we can see the philosopher, calm and 
imperturbable, regulating the display and shaping the whole exhi- 
bition by his own pre-conceptions. His poetry, like Apollo's 
singing to the lyre after exerting his strength with the bow, was 
to him rather a recreation than the business of life. So great a 
master was he of his art, so facile and ready an imitator of every 
phase and feature of human nature, that he does not hesitate to 
take the poet and the poet's frenzy for the subject of his imita- 
tion. His mind, like another Nature, was as busy and pains- 
taking in small things as in great, and like Nature, too, he quietly 
puts his works before us in all their beauty and finish, without 
the slightest hint of the complex processes by which they are pro- 
duced. And indeed, in his unflagging attention to minutice, he 
seems to have had the same mental constitution that characterized 
Bacon, for the latter, notwithstanding his vast and sublime com- 
prehension, dwells upon the importance of attending to the slight- 
est turns of phrases, the mucrones verborum, the goads and stings 
of words and their power to work upon the mind. In this respect 
preeminent skill belonged to the writer of these plays, who, in 
addition to the poet's song and the philosopher's insight, possessed 
an ingenuity in the use of language so extraordinary as to make 
every word contribute to the main effect. 

To summarize the results of the foregoing analysis with respect 
to the Baconian philosophy : The Winter s Tale is a poem in- 
tended to elucidate the primary principles of poetic art in general 
and of a new and profound dramatic art in particular; it is also 
a lesson in life, portraying life as under the guiding principle of 
Honor, and using for a standard of judgment the idea of moral 
goodness. But this is not drawn from experience; it is a con- 
ception of the mind, which is used to judge of men as known 
from hearsay and the relation of others, from history and from 
fiction. The play, therefore, exhibits men judging by a rule 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 161 

founded in Opinion, a method which answers to that branch of 
the Art of Judging, which, in the absence of experience, makes 
its proofs by syllogism. The play is consequently written in an 
argumentative style and is filled with disputation and difference 
of opinion, and exemplifies to a surprising degree the fundamental 
"topics" or "places" set forth by rhetoricians for the derivation 
of enthymemes. And in this respect it gives numerous examples 
of that branch of the " Art of Invention " as laid down by Bacon^ 
which is termed the Invention of Arguments. And the whole 
piece illustrates that mode of judging adopted by the old philoso- 
phies, which aimed only to extend opinions and theories and left 
all important discoveries to Time and Chance. 

The examples of the rhetorical art contained in the play are 
illustrative of that branch of Bacon's Doctrine of Transmission, 
called " the doctrine concerning the adornment of discourse," 
and at the same time are instances of the use and practice (in 
dramatic life and action) of that subdivision of "Civil Know- 
ledge," also laid down by Bacon (and as such originating with 
him, for he enumerates it among " the deficiencies of learning "), 
in which persuasion is particularly needed, that is, " counsel in 
the emergencies of life," including also the arts of decorum. 

And around this science and philosophy is thrown a garb of 
legendary story, replete with the spirit of a winter's tale, and the 
whole stands forth a miracle of art, which, like the wonderful 
strain of the musician that vanquished and broke the heart of the 
nightingale, hath in it 

" Curiosity and cunning, 
Concord in discord, lines of differing method 
Meeting in one full centre of delight." 
11 



KING LEAE. 

This tragedy bears some such relation to the old fable of 
"King Leir and his three daughters," on which it is founded, as 
a majestic oak bears to the acorn from which it has sprung; yet 
notwithstanding its magnificent expansion of the original germ, 
it retains the characteristics and carries the idea or " form " of a 
fable through all its parts, and thus becomes itself a fable or 
apologue in dramatic form. 

The essence of a fable is to convey some knowledge of the 
world or of human nature by symbol and figure ; and for this pur- 
pose, beasts, birds, plants, or any objects of either the animate or 
inanimate world are used for speakers and actors ; but these ab- 
surdities are accepted for the sake of the hidden meaning which 
they symbolize, while their " moral" or application to human life 
often comes home so closely to " the bosoms and businesses of 
men " that they pass into popular speech as proverbs. The fable 
of Lear, however, purports to be a historical tradition, which, 
though wearing the air of invention proper to a myth, is not so 
remote from common experience as to be unfit for dramatic repre- 
sentation. The story is familiar : an old king worn with age and 
the cares of state proposes to divide his kingdom among his -three 
daughters, and as a test of their affection, offers to give the 
largest portion to her who shall show that she loves him most. 
This trial ends in his bestowing the whole realm on his two eldest 
daughters as a reward for their love, of which they made loud 
and extravagant professions, and in disinheriting as a punishment 
for her pride the youngest child, who refuses to say anything. 
Up to this point the legend furnishes, perhaps, only a conspicuous 
instance of folly and self-esteem on the part of the old monarch, 
but it becomes deeply significant when it goes on to add, that the 
two daughters who, by their flattery, win the kingdom, are utterly 
heartless, while the youngest daughter, who refuses to proclaim 
her love in words, is devotedly filial in deeds. It is an image of 
the great world, where fraud and adulation are constantly w r in- 






KING LEAR. 163 

ning the prize that is due to truth and service ; and the gross 
errors into which the old king in the distribution of his kingdom 
is led seems to have prompted the dramatist to consider the dis- 
pensing of rewards and punishments, as it exists in the Family 
and the State, in contrast with the Order of Nature, and to found 
thereon a tragedy which should exhibit human justice made par- 
tial by affection as itself amenable to the Eternal Equity that 
everywhere prevails in the government of the world. Of such 
government or Order, the course of nature — or chain of causes 
— is the representative, and is therefore assumed as the back- 
ground of the piece. 

The time and place of the action are in keeping with this 
design and with the reduction of so comprehensive a subject to a 
practical dramatic scale. Britain at the period represented in 
the play is a semi-barbarous country, of sparse population, among 
whom deeds of violence and outrage are common ; absolute power 
is vested in the monarch, who holds the kingdom as an owner 
holds an estate, to be divided and parceled out among whom he 
pleases and as he pleases ; the exercise of power is dependent 
solely on the will, the rulers passing summary judgment on 
offenders and inflicting the cruelest punishments with their own 
hands ; the king and great nobles travel with their retinues on 
horseback from castle to castle across wild heaths ; civil laws and 
conventional regulations are but slightly mentioned, and both 
man and society are left, as far as possible, subject to the law 
of nature alone. 

By this plan are secured some highly dramatic effects ; it in- 
troduces the manners of a barbarous age with their fiercer pas- 
sions and stronger contrasts, and at the same time gives philo- 
sophic depth to its view of the state by tracing authority to its 
rightful source in the will governed by reason and wisdom. 

The antithesis between the real and the factitious which runs 
through the Shakespearian drama, assumes in Lear its greatest 
breadth, it being nothing less than that between the world of soul 
and the world of sense. But Lear is a heathen play, and the 
poet adopts a view of the world similar to the heathen opinion 
that the world is the image of God (or symbol of spirit}, and 
man (in the union of body and soul) the image of the world. 
The ancient as well as the mediaeval philosophers termed man a 
microcosm or little world, on account of the correspondences and 



164 KING LEAR. 

parallels feigned to be found in his body with all variety of things 
which are extant in the great world (see Advancement, Book II. 
p. 241). But with greater propriety may man be termed a micro- 
cosm for the reason to be found in the following passage of 
Bacon : ;i God hath framed the mind of man as a mirror or glass 
capable of the image of the universal world, and joyful to receive 
the impression thereof as the eye joyeth to receive light, and not 
only delighted in beholding the variety of things and vicissitudes 
of times, but raised also to find out and discern the ordinances 
and decrees, which throughout all these changes are infallibly 
observed," (Adv. p. 93). And in fact it was the aim of the 
Baconian philosophy by the investigation of causes to "build in 
the human understanding a true model of the world 97 (Nov. 
Org. Book I. Aph. 124), for the mind of man contains po- 
tentially all the laws of nature ; and his changing moods and 
mental states have correspondences and parallels in natural facts, 
as when Lear, frantic with grief and buffeted by the storm, — 

" Strives in his little world of man to out-scorn 
The to-and-fro conflicting wind and rain." 1 

or conversely, in the parallel which Gloster draws between the 
ending of the world and Lear's great decay : — 

•''0 ruined piece of Nature! this great world 
Shall so wear out to nought.''' 

And the poet has therefore seen fit to make the play itself an 
image of the world, that is, of the microcosm or " little world of 
man " (for it is only with man that the drama deals), in which 
the primary elements of order in Society and the State are pre- 
sented as existing in the family. — the family and the State here 
being one as the latter is represented as a patriarchy. — while all 
the differing conditions of men are comprised in the compend 
furnished by the king and the beggar. Society and human inter- 
course in their main features and controlling principles are here 
drawn to a focal point, in which as in a model we see the world 
with its incessant ongoings and reciprocal influences of feeling 
and action, its friendships and enmities, its eager pursuit of its 
ends, whether of business or pleasure, its sensuality and pride, its 
obsequious worship of wealth and power, its treachery and ingrati- 
tude, and, let us add, its devotion and self-sacrifice, together with 
its retributions whether ascribable to the vicissitudes of Fortune 
or to the dark and secret judgments of God. 






KING LEAR. 165 

By searching into the causes of the phenomena around us we 
become acquainted with the laws of nature and the true values of 
things. Every phenomenon is the product and outward repre- 
sentation of an indwelling property and nature and is a symbol 
of such nature. In the physical world, the external form is an 
unvarying index of the inward cause or law, but in the human 
world the element of the will is added, and through its corrup- 
tion the symbols that man set up often become separated from 
the truth signified. A king, for instance, is a colossal symbol of 
power, as the crown and sceptre are symbols of the office, but 
the power itself is a symbol of wisdom and virtue, since from 
these alone proceed the right and authority to pronounce judg- 
ment and to reward and punish. A fool or a madman, though 
wearing the robe and holding the sword of justice, is a monstrous 
perversion of regal authority, while a king without power is a 
symbol without meaning. So too with wealth and possessions : 
they are the results and representatives of knowledge and virtue, 
and in the hands of the wise man are the instruments of benefi- 
cence ; but when prized only for the sensual gratifications they 
can confer, or when obtained by violence or fraud, the symbol is 
detached from that to which it belongs, although even then it acts 
so strongly on the imagination that it too often wins the regard 
which is due only to the moral force of which it is primarily the 
product. 

Most of the Shakespearian plays look at the world at a certain 
angle, which presents a picture of man in some particular relation, 
but in Lear the representation is one of the world itself taken as 
a whole ; and in order, therefore, to make the theory of the play 
more apparent, it will be necessary to set forth man's relation to 
the world or his fellow- men, — a relation that must be expressed 
in his whole course of life and the principles that govern it. The 
conceptions that make up the theory of a play are arrived at by a 
development of the literary " form " on which the play is founded, 
and this in the case of Lear is that of a fable, the chief end and 
purpose of which is to impart a knowledge of the world by sym- 
bols ; consequently, in a world developed from the " form " of a 
fable, in which men and women are symbols with an inward 
meaning, the knowledge of men is the chief end of life, in the pur- 
suit of which inquiry and observation are used as means, and out 
of these grows up Philosophy. These conceptions are embodied 



166 KING LEAK. 






in the characters and incidents which, in this tragedy, are in the 
highest degree picturesque and interesting, yet when disembodied, 
so to speak, and stated baldly as abstract propositions, are ex- 
ceedingly trite and familiar. Consequently, the main heads of 
the scheme of the piece only will be touched upon, and that with 
as much brevity as is consistent with clearness. 

The relation of man to the world is necessarily twofold, 
being both to the phenomenal and to the real world or to the 
world of sense and the world of soul, the duality of nature being 
emphasized by the union of body and soul in man himself. By 
his bodily wants and instincts and his sensual desires he is allied 
to external nature and the lower orders of animals, but by the 
possession of a soul comprising faculties mental and spiritual, 
he is raised to a higher and nobler nature, a Human nature, and 
is made participant of that Truth which is the soul and regulative 
principle of the world, and of which the phenomenal world is but 
the symbol and shadow. The distinctive human faculty is the 
reason which regulates the sympathies and affections by which 
men are bound up into one brotherhood under the law of love 
and a common Humanity. To the reason man owes his preroga- 
tive of goodness as, on the other hand, to the overthrow of rea- 
son by his lower nature is due his preeminence in wickedness. 
On its speculative side, reason is the organ of knowledge, and 
by tracing causes and consequences, attains that knowledge of the 
laws of nature which is called prudence, or providence, through 
which means are adapted to ends and a course of life rightly 
directed. The highest form of prudence is Wisdom, which com- 
prises a knowledge of moral as well as of physical causes, and 
which, in addition to rightly adapting means to ends, implies also 
that insight into the true qualities and values of things which 
leads to the selection of right ends and the consequent pursuance 
of a right course of action. These laws of nature, when dis- 
covered and formulated, become precepts or rules which are laid 
down for the conduct of life, and a knowledge of them qualifies 
a man for the exercise of authority, the essence of which is to 
prescribe a rule and enforce it by rewards and penalties. These 
rules, moreover, the wise man obeys as well as teaches, and he, 
therefore, is the true king. To know the truth and to practice 
it in its various forms of justice, love, and purity is to live after 
the law of human kind, to live rationally ; it is to he a man, or, 
as the ancient moralists had it, to live consistently with nature. 



KING LEAR. 167 

And as Bacon declares it to be the end of Natural Philosophy 
to build in the understanding an exemplar of the universe or 
great world, so in like manner is it the end of the study of 
Human Nature to build in the mind a model of the little world, 
man; and this, so far as it is attained, is called "a knowledge 
of the world." 

Though placed at the summit of the scale, man is still a com- 
ponent part of the great whole, one rank in the scheme of the 
world, the order of which is disturbed as soon as any of its parts 
cease to act according to its law of kind. The law of human 
kind is, in one word, Humanity, which, when man violates, he 
drops into his lower nature and becomes in-human. 

It is the office of the reason, by the laws which it discovers, to 
regulate the will and affections, and by " affections " in Shake- 
spearian language is signified any state of mind or body produced 
by whatever cause, and includes as well the sensual desires and 
appetites as the moral feelings, and thus comprises all possible 
motives that can act upon the will. These affections are excited 
by the shows and appearances of the world, which are the signs 
of the inward qualities and modes of action of the objects 
around us, and which as they give pleasure or pain excite corre- 
spondent feelings of love or hate. Man instinctively seeks good 
and avoids evil ; he hopes for the one and fears the other, and 
on this hope and fear rests the efficacy of rewards and punish- 
ments. In the physical world, under the law of cause and effect, 
all objects, so far as they come within the sphere of one another's 
influence, act and react according to their respective affinities 
and repulsions, and out of this amity and strife arise all the 
varied phenomena of nature, and out of it, too, spring those ben- 
efits and injuries which reward and punish, so far as man is 
concerned, the proper or improper use of such objects, or what 
is the same thing, the observance or neglect of natural law. 
Nature thus makes man wise and obedient by chastising his 
errors. In Gloster's phrase he " is scourged by the sequent 
effects," or, as Regan more pointedly says, — 

" To willful men 
The injuries that they themselves procure 
Must be their schoolmasters. " 

But the phenomena which in this world of appearance touch us 
most closely are the looks, words, and actions of our follow- 



168 KIXG LEAE. 

creatures, as being the outward signs and symbols of their inward 
thoughts and feelings. And in illustrating this truth, L ear bears 
some resemblance to Cymbeline, with this difference, however, 
that whereas in Cymbeline the natures of men are judged of in 
order to determine their place in the scale of men, in Lear their 
dispositions are inquired into with a view of determining their 
place in the scale of nature, or whether they are characterized by 
humanity or inhumanity, and more particularly whether they are 
affected towards ourselves with love or hate, are friends or foes, 
are disposed to benefit or injure us. And just as we determine 
these points are our own feelings swayed to friendship or enmity. 
For the law. of action and reaction is as fatal in the moral as in 
the physical world, although by reason of the corrupt heart and 
erring judgment of man. its working is subject to manifold com- 
plications, and is, therefore, less readily discernible. In this 
sphere, this law is called retribution, taken in its broadest sense 
of a return of good and evil. And although some men are so 
base as to repay good with evil, and others so noble as to repay 
evil with good, the law of direct retaliation as a general rule 
prevails : love begets love, hate, hate : causing rewards and pun- 
ishments to be dispensed to a very great extent by the reciprocal 
play of human feeling, taking form in a return of good or evil ; 
love and beneficence awakening gratitude and a desire to recom- 
pense the benefactor ; and when other means fail, expressing 
itself at least verbally in praises, prayers, blessings, good wishes ; 
as. on the other hand, malice and injustice arouse resentment and 
a spirit of revenge, which, if not resorting to deeds, break forth 
in curses and maledictions. And these feelings, which thus 
prompt to actions that deeply affect the lives and fortunes of 
men, and make up the web and tissue of human affairs, spread as 
the circles of society enlarge from private friends and enemies to 
the parties and factions of the State, which as they chance to rise 
in turn one over the other, bestow rewards upon friends and 
punishment upon enemies : as Albany says after the battle, — 

" All friends shall taste the wages of their virtue, 
And all foes the cup of their deserving." 

Nor is the disposition to reward and punish confined to those 
who are immediately interested : the moral sentiments of men 
leading them to approve of good deeds and avenge bad ones, 



KING LEAR. 169 

even in cases of persons unknown or known to be enemies. Our 
sympathies, however, greatly darken the judgment and pervert 
the sense of justice, as is often seen in partisan zeal, which so 
seldom finds any good in an adversary or wrong-doing in a friend. 
This is amusingly illustrated in the play. Lear's servant Caius 
(Kent) meets Goneril's steward, and at once quarrels with him : 
" Draw, you rascal. You came with letters against the king, and 
take Vanity, the puppet's part against the royalty of her father ," 
etc. Cornwall, the head of the faction which the steward follows, 
inquires into the cause of the disturbance, which Kent places on 
personal grounds, but the steward more adroitly lays it to the 
account of Kent's following the King's party, when Cornwall at 
once rewards Kent's zeal by setting him in the stocks. 

The business of life is the pursuit of ends, and a course of 
life is characterized as good or bad by the nature of its ends and 
of the means used to attain them. Success depends upon pru- 
dence, or fortune, or both : prudence is the knowledge of causes 
(of which the most important are the desires and wills of men), 
and the consequent ability to adapt means to ends, whilst For- 
tune is but a name for the working of Nature on a scale immeas- 
urable to human eyes, and affecting the lives and affairs of men 
through causes unexpected or wholly unknown. Fortune, there- 
fore, is ignorance of causes ; and in proportion as man obtains 
knowledge of nature's laws, he becomes independent of Fortune, 
even in worldly matters. The profoundest wisdom, however, is 
of but little avail to guard against the infinite chances of life, 
from which circumstance it is necessarily inferable — and the 
conclusion seems in some measure to reconcile the inequalities of 
fortune to our sense of justice, — that retribution of moral good 
and evil is not meted out in the world of sense but in the world 
of soul, and that goodness, whatever its worldly fortune may be, 
is rewarded with that peace which is in itself a heaven, and wick- 
edness, however prosperous, is punished by those terrors which 
are in themselves a hell, or, as Bacon broadly puts it, that men in 
the pursuit of fortune ought to set before their eyes not only 
that general map of the world "that all things arc vanity and 
vexation of spirit," but also that more particular chart, namely, 
" that being without well-being is a curse, and the greater the 
being the greater the curse," and " that all virtue is most rewarded 
and all wickedness most punished in itself." As the poet excel- 
lently says : — 



170 KING LEAR. 

•'• Quae vobis. quae digna. viri. pro laudibus istis 
Praemia posse rear solvi ? puk-herrmia prinium 
Dii moresque dabunt vestri: " - 

and so. on the other hand, it is no less truly said of the wicked, 
M His own manners will be his punishment." De Aug. Book 
VIII. eh. ii. 

But since the mass of mankind judge by the event which is an 
object of the sense, while few have the penetration to read the 
ets of the soul. Fortune seems to govern the world irrespect- 
ive of the merits or demerits of those she raises or overthrows, 
and produces a scene of moral confusion so inexplicable that we 
are fain to call it " the mystery of things " and the inscrutable 
ways of Providence. 

The riddle of the world, however, perplexing as it is felt to be. 
avails not to impair the natural faith that the course of events is 
guided by Supreme Wisdom, and that an eternal Equity balances 
all accounts in the long run. The very pillars of the world must, 
of necessity, rest on justice. If there were a cranny or a crevice 
in the universe where error could find permanent lodgment and 
wrong accumulate, the crack would widen until all order were 
destroyed and the world rent asunder. It can. therefore, never 
come to pass that the success of evil can be more than temporary, 
for action and reaction are sure to adjust the account to an exact- 
itude that cannot possibly admit of variation. In the nature of 
things, action and reaction must be mathematically equal, and 
the equipoise does not vary by so much even as the weight of the 
dust of the balance. 

Yet in spite of the conviction that justice reigns, self-love 
prompts men to attribute their misfortunes to any influence rather 
than to their own conduct. " This is the excellent foppery of 
the world." says that keen reader of men. Edmund. " that when 
we are Eten the surfeit of our own &«/ 

we make guilty of our disasters the sun. the moon, and the stars." 
Dire calamities rush forth, like dark and secret fates, to over- 
whelm their victims, and men are struck down by afflictions 
which seem so unmerited that in their impatience they cry out 
with Gloster. — 

1 u You brave young- men. what equal gifts can we 
In i of such d . e ? 

The greatest score and best you can receive 
The gods and vour own conscious worth will g-ive." 



KING LEAR. 171 

" Like flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods ; 
They kill us for their sport ; " 

but were it possible to attain such a height of knowledge as to 
look over the whole web of affairs, we should of necessity see 
that in a world locked up in a chain of cause and effect the 
ground for these occurrences had been prepared beforehand. 
And, after all, these discrepancies between the human and divine 
judgments — these cases of the " Dis aliter visum" — are ex- 
ceptional. The mass of mankind are in condition, so far as 
their happiness, perhaps so far as their welfare is concerned, 
exactly what they make themselves. Fortune lies hid in char- 
acter; the miser will be rich, the prodigal poor, and one diffi- 
culty in piercing to the truth that underlies the moral confusion 
of the world arises from the complex results growing out of the 
mingling of good and bad qualities in the same character. The 
rogue who brings skill and industry to the accomplishment of his 
designs is likely to succeed however bad his intent, while the 
careless or ignorant man of probity is as likely to fail. Nature's 
laws never relax ; with them a breach is necessarily attended 
with a penalty ; wisdom and goodness practiced for a lifetime 
will not exempt from punishment for a single error ; and a life, 
as it is good or bad, is recompensed in its results. This is 
especially marked in age, when the habit of acting from a par- 
ticular set of motives has become indurated into a type of char- 
acter, — as Lear, for instance, who exhibits the pernicious effects 
of a long life of arbitrary power. Lear stands for a course of 
life, for the habits of fourscore years, — and his age, therefore, 
is an important element in the character. As Coleridge says, 
" In Lear, old age is made a character." 

The inexorable law that profligacy will entail misery and pov- 
erty is exhibited in the model of " poor Tom." " What hast 
thou been? " asks Lear of the naked, shivering beggar. 

" Edgar. A serving-man (i. e. a lover), proud in heart and mind ; that 
curPd my hair, wore gloves in my cap, served the lust of my mistress' heart, 
. . . swore as many oaths as I spake words, and broke them in the sweet face 
of heaven. One that slept in the contriving lust, and waked to do it. Wine 
loved I deeply, dice dearly, and in woman out-paramouivd the Turk," eto. 

The instinctive feeling that condign punishment will surely 
tread upon the heels of great wickedness breaks out in the re- 



172 KING LEAK 

marks of Cornwall's servants after the horrible atrocity perpe- 
trated by him and Kegan upon Gloster. 

" 1 Serv. I'll never care what wickedness I do 
If this man come to good. 
2 Serv. If she live long, 

And, in the end, meet the old course of death, 
Women will all turn monsters." 

Retribution is thus inherent in every act. Sometimes the 
counterblow is speedy ; sometimes years elapse before the act as 
cause reappears in the penalty as effect. Of the latter a notable 
instance is furnished by the punishment of Gloster's youthful 
sensuality by the loss in his old age of his eyes through the 
treachery of Edmund, — the fruit of his early license. This, to 
the careless observer, would seem to be a stroke of Fortune, but 
the poet draws aside the veil that so often hides from our eyes 
the remote causes of these dark judgments, and tells us (in Ed- 
gar's remark to Edmund), — - 

" The Gods are just and of our pleasant vices 
Make instruments to plague us. 
The dark and vicious place where thee he got 
Cost him his eyes" 

Of the former, an example is given in the death of Cornwall* 
who, in the pride of absolute power, dreams that he can com- 
mit injustice with impunity. Intending to wreak vengeance upon 
Gloster, he says to Regan : — 

" Tho' well we may not pass upon his life 

Without the form of justice , yet our power 
Shall do a courtesy to our wrath, which man 
May blame, but not control." 

He thereupon pinions Gloster and tears out his eyes, but so 
flagrant a violation of humauity arouses the natural indignation 
of one of his own servants, who bids him hold ; Cornwall rushes 
upon him to slay him, but in so doing receives from the manly 
peasant a mortal wound. This speedy punishment, brought about 
by Nature's laws, elicits from Albany a recognition of the divine 
government that works by retributive reaction : — 

" This shows you are above 
Yon justicers, that these our nether crimes 
So speedily can venge." 



KING LEAK. 173 

That which chiefly concerns us in life is life itself. For the 
preservation of life in the individual aud the race, nature has im- 
planted in man passions so imperious as to require the strongest 
restraints of reason to keep them from filling society with dis- 
order. In nothing does the animal so easily gain an ascendancy 
over the spiritual as in the passion of love ; and its degrading 
influence is made the subject of Lear's bitterest invective when in 
his madness he pours out his knowledge of the world's corruption. 
In the worldly, the love of life is the strongest of motives, length 
of days the most earnest of prayers. 

" O our lives' sweetness ! 
That we the pain of death would hourly bear 
Rather than die at once." 

But the wise man deems that the only true life is the life of the 
soul, to which that of the body is subordinate and merely instru- 
mental. He knows that the duties of life are preferable to life 
itself ; that truth which comprehends all goodness and without 
which the soul is dead is infinitely more valuable than a few 
short years of precarious enjoyment, and holds his earthly exist- 
ence cheap in comparison with duty. The patriot, the hero, and 
the martyr — all " who greatly think and bravely die " — point us 
to the true estimate of life. So Kent, being threatened with death 
by the king, says : — 

" My life I never held but as a pawn 
To wage against thine enemies j nor fear to lose it, 
Thy safety being the motive." 

This contempt of death at the call of duty is a true loyalty to 
man's higher nature, and not even the basest and most worldly 
love of life and its pleasures can blind us to its beauty. 

Trust and treachery play great parts in the world's intercourse, 
and they are correspondingly conspicuous in the microcosm pre- 
sented by this tragedy. Truth of soul so strongly exemplified in 
Kent's fearless discharge of duty is the source of all trust between 
man and man. Without it, society could not hold together a 
single day. A violation of it in any of its forms entails the deep- 
est disgrace. A breach of trust in business matters is utterly dis- 
reputable ; a breach of one's word is the greatest dishonor, while 
in matters of affection between individuals treachery is considered 
the basest of villainies, as treason towards one's country is the 



174 KING LEAR. 

blackest of crimes. The closer the tie the deeper the trust, and 
consequently the baser the breach of it. Domestic treason, there- 
fore, as of the child towards the father, or of friend to friend, 
shocks the sentiments of mankind. This want of truth, this 
treachery or diabolism, — for it is the characteristic of the devil, 
who negatives all that is positive and good, — is perhaps the most 
marked feature in this grand ]}icture of the world's hollowness 
and ceaseless conflict of truth and falsehood. 

The one great end of life, common to all men, is Happiness, to 
which all other ends are subordinate. These last fall into two 
great classes, just as a course of life is directed towards realities 
and goods of the soul, or towards mere symbols or things of the 
sense. It is the old story of the two paths of life, leading respec- 
tively to virtue and to vice, and illustrated by many an allegory 
and emblem in both ancient and modern times — such as the 
tablet of Cebes, the choice of Hercules, the Y of Pythagoras, the 
Flower and the Leaf, the two Apprentices, and scores of others; 
it is the teaching of philosophy which directs us to seek wisdom 
and disdain riches ; it is the mandate of religion which enjoins 
holiness and forbids undue indulgence of the sense. The tragedy 
of Lear is a version of the same allegory, drawn with Shake- 
spearian breadth and profundity. It teaches that if a course of 
life is obedient to nature's laws and keeps in view wisdom and 
goodness, which are the proper pursuit of a rational being, and 
which prescribe love and the brotherhood of the race as human 
duties, it will secure peace and happiness, be raised above chance 
and misfortune, and be touched with something of angelic light, 
as is seen in the character of Cordelia ; but if, on the other hand, 
the course pursued aim only at the ends offered by the world of 
sense — such as wealth, power, rank, pleasure, and the like — 
which are symbols only, valid so long as the substance and the 
symbol accord, but otherwise empty and vain, then life will be 
subject to all the blows of Fortune and liable to end in disap- 
pointment and misery : and in cases where this spirit of worldli- 
ness is carried to the extreme, the character will be deformed by 
a wickedness utterly fiendish, as we see typified in Goneril and 
Regan. 

The two classes of motives which determine these courses are 
summed up by Cordelia in a distich with which she justifies her 
conduct in landing an army on her native land to protect her 
father : — 



KING LEAR. 175 

'• No blown ambition does our arms incite, 
But love, dear love, and our aged father's right." 

By these two different paths of life, one of virtue, the other 
of worldliness, are fostered two opposite affections, both rooted 
in Self-Love, the fundamental principle of human nature, which 
under the government of the reason leads to the love of others 
and acts of beneficence, but which, when merely a love of self, is 
utterly heartless and devoid of humanity. This last has its in- 
tensest forms in Sensuality and Pride, both of which violate in 
the highest degree the essential humanity of man : sensuality 
springing out of the animal appetites, unspiritualized by the soul, 
and pride out of the sense of superiority derived from the posses- 
sion of riches, rank, power, and other external advantages, more 
often the gifts of Fortune than the reward of merit. 

Between love and pride there is a direct antagonism, a polarity, 
which presents in extreme contrast the divine and the demoniac 
sides of human nature, and which, recognized as it is by all true 
morality as the result of man's fallen condition, necessarily lies at 
the bottom of the profoundest principles of character. In fact 
this tragedy implies the paradise this world might become through 
love by exhibiting the hell that it is made by hate. Taking for 
illustration the dual world of soul and sense as viewed in the 
microcosm, man, who, if obedient to nature's laws, partakes of 
nature's order and is exalted and spiritualized by love, truth, jus- 
tice, and purity, but who if dissevered from nature's order, 
becomes the slave of sense and passion and the source of all jar 
and discord, it sweeps through the whole circle of man's moral 
nature ; yet the grandest picture it presents is one of pride of 
heart, which overbearing the reason, centres all love in self ; 
being utterly regardless of the affections of others, except so far 
as they administer to the cravings of its own vanity. This pas- 
sion is the vilest and the wickedest of any that debase human 
nature. It is the scourge of social man. Utterly unsympathetic 
and loveless, it tends solely to division and isolation, and is of the 
very essence of caste. It creates and perpetuates artificial ranks 
and classes, separating society into various kinds, not according 
to natural differences, but according to varying conditions of lite, 
and bestows consideration only upon that which has no moral 
weight whatever. Between the rich and the poor, it opens a 
chasm almost as wide as that between man and the brute erea- 



176 KING LEAR. 



out- 



tion. Indifferent to intrinsic worth, it plumes itself upon 
ward display alone, holding in higher regard the attire than the 
wearer, the attribute than the substance, the symbol than the 
thing signified, and bows to nothing but superiority of worldly 
condition. Its votaries see in each other the image of their own 
pride, and this is the only bond of sympathy between them. 
Though wearing sometimes the mask of benevolence, yet of real 
charity — a word that implies the law of love and the brotherhood 
of the race — it knows nothing. State, style, equipage, parade, 
form, exclusiveness, — in all these it hedges itself from profane 
approach, and is gracious to inferiors only when they pay their 
court with deference and flattery. Though most conspicuous in 
the high, it is confined to no class, but pervades all ranks and 
even in the lowest circles spreads heart-burning and strife through 
the pretensions of some to a standing superior to that of their 
fellows. Above all, it is the curse of families ; it despises and 
abhors poor relations ; it rends asunder the closest ties, severing 
parent from child and brother from brother, and has lain at the 
bottom of family ruptures since the days of the first fratricide. 
This is the passion — the fountain-head of what most shocks us 
in domestic annals and the source of what is most monstrous and 
unnatural in human character — which is brought forward in this 
play as the great disturbing force in the life of man and the har- 
mony of Nature. 

The closest tie that binds man to nature is that of parent and 
child. This tie, which blood cooperates with duty to strengthen 
and preserve, is a direct form of the order of nature both in the 
physical and spiritual worlds, for it is a type of the law of physi- 
cal cause and effect. As Bacon says, " The cause is as the parent 
of the effect, and it is a familiar and almost continual form of 
speech to denote cause and effect as parent and child ; " x and on 
the spiritual side its reciprocal rights and duties exemplify in the 
intensest form the law of human love and the great rule of justice 
or exact exchange of equivalents. This rule is thus stated by 

Cordelia : — 

" I love you 
According to my bond, nor more nor less : 



You have begot me, bred me, lov'd me, I 
Return those duties back as are right Jit • 
Obey you, love you and most honour you" 

1 Bacon's Works, De Principiis, vol. x. p. 344. 



KING LEAK. 177 

This relation, therefore, is a type of government, a pattern of 
authority and obedience , and therefore representative of all those 
correlations which involve to a greater or less degree the same 
principle, as king and subject, husband and wife, master and ser- 
vant, patron and client, landlord and tenant (in the feudal sense), 
and the play introduces also the relation of host and guest. The 
family then, with its enduring love and duties and its natural 
obedience and subordination, is the fundamental form of social 
organization, and the principles that hold together the fabric of 
the state are but an extension in a widening circle of those feel- 
ings that have their centre and focus in the domestic relations. 

The authority of the parent is absolute and rests solely on the 
will, and like all authority, divine and human, is enforced by 
rewards and penalties. The exercise of this authority must be 
governed by justice, and justice must be dispensed by Wisdom, 
which alone can determine with exactitude the reward or punish- 
ment commensurate with the merit or offense. It must be con- 
sonant with the Eternal Equity, or exact exchange of equivalents 
that reigns throughout nature. No human reason, however, ever 
attained this perfection. Both love and hate interfere to sway 
our judgments, to say nothing of the profound ignorance of the 
truth we are often under with regard to the motives that lead to 
the action we consider. These causes inevitably produce an in- 
equality or want of equity, by prompting us to return more or 
less of pleasure or pain than the particular case or person may 
deserve. It is, therefore, incumbent on all men, and particu- 
larly on those who exercise authority, to learn the truth by ex- 
amining and searching into the causes of actions, to look at the 
intent as well as the act, to avoid all haste and rashness, and thus 
apportion rewards and penalties according to desert. 

To obtain the wisdom requisite to guide the judgment, there is 
needed a twofold knowledge of man, that is, of the ideal and of 
the actual man, the first of which consists of a knowledge of those 
laws of man's being which prescribe his duties in all conditions 
and relations of life, and which constitute the moral code or a 
knowledge of man as he ought to be, or in other words, moral 
philosophy ; and also that other knowledge of men, as they actu- 
ally are, which last is more particularly called " the knowledge 
of the world." This latter is derived from an actual experience 
of men, and especially of those deceits and pretenses — those 
12 



178 KING LEAE. 






" cautels and impostures and evil acts," as Bacon has it — under 
which they hide their purposes, vices, follies, crimes, and wicked- 
ness, which, like the secrets of external nature, are only to be 
discovered by long trial and observation. Out of this knowledge 
grow the Arts of Policy. 

This is the building of a model of the microcosm in the mind, 
and this acquaintance with mankind enables its possessor to dis- 
cern between the symbol and the reality, that is, to detect the 
true intentions of others, to see the true causes of their conduct 
and thus discriminate between the sincere and the false, and place 
a just estimate upon their words and acts. It is only this prac- 
tical knowledge of men that will counteract the flattery of a 
Goneril or the devilish machinations of an Edmund. 

But the body, notwithstanding its inferiority to the soul, has 
demands which are imperative on both saint and sinner. Pro- 
vision must be made for our animal wants, for Nature, who is 
called our kindly mother, and who, on her poetic side, so feeds 
our minds with beauty (when our bodies are at ease), is, in her 
prosaic and practical aspect utterly pitiless, and will freeze, starve, 
or otherwise destroy us, unless we protect ourselves against her 
savage forces. Food, raiment, and shelter are indispensable ; 
hence the eagerness to acquire worldly possessions, mere barriers 
in the first instance against the extremity of the skies and the ills 
of poverty. Owing to the differences among men, great inequali- 
ties of condition arise, a few growing rich and powerful, while 
the mass become to a greater or less extent dependent on their 
" betters," — a word denoting originally a higher degree of good- 
ness, but quickly and permanently transferred to superiority of for- 
tune. All beyond necessary use is superfluity ; in the language 
of the play, it is " addition " to the man. So long, however, as 
this superfluity or " adjunct," as Bacon calls it, is in the hands 
of the wise and just, this inequality is corrected, the wise man 
holding his riches in trust and as the means of diffusing comfort 
and happiness. A sense of brotherhood equalizes all differences 
and each man has enough. It is the doctrine of the play that 
human love, the direct opposite of an inhuman pride, should lead 
the strong to protect the weak and aid them in their struggles 
with the pitiless forces of nature. 

" Heavens deal so still ; 
Let the superfluous and lust dieted man 



KING LEAR. 179 

That slaves your ordinance, that will not see 
Because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly ; 
So distribution should undo excess 
And each man have enough" 

And so emphasized is this sentiment that it is repeated in 
another passage. 

But riches, instead of promoting charity, swell the heart with 
pride and convert the love of the world, the human world, into a 
calculating and cold-hearted worldliness, which so far from com- 
miserating the poor and unfortunate, holds them in disdain and 
tramples them under foot. Thus man degrades the high faculties 
that constitute his specific human kind and degenerates into in- 
humanity. 

But inasmuch as the love that others have for us is the measure 
of the value they set upon us, the man of pride, though wholly 
heartless, is flattered by nothing so much as by professions of 
love and admiration. Such professions are primarily due to 
wisdom and goodness, of which wealth and rank are outward 
symbols, so that when these symbols are separated from the 
things they signify, they draw after them the homage that is due 
only to the reality ; and so dear to the heart of man is this esteem, 
which seems to be a tribute to his own superiority, that the strug- 
gle for riches and power fills the world with every species of 
rapine, cruelty, and wrong. 

Were it not for the respect and consideration that follow after 
wealth and station, avarice and ambition would die out of the 
human heart. This trait of human nature is thus cynically hit 
off by Rousseau : " If," says he, " we behold a handful of rich 
and powerful men seated on the pinnacle of fortune and great- 
ness, while the crowd gropes in obscurity and want, it is merely 
because the first prize what they enjoy but in the same degree 
that others want it, and that without changing their condition 
they would cease to be happy the moment the people ceased to be 
miserable." 

The sycophancy of the world, however, is quite equal to the 
demands made upon it. The great and powerful are always 
attended by troops of followers, who are loud in their professions 
of attachment and whose adulation so "infuses with self and 
vain conceit " that instances are not infrequent where men have 
been so blind in judgment and lost to self-knowledge that they 



180 KING LEAR. 






have imagined themselves more than mortal and have aped the 
style of the Gods. Lear is brought by flattery almost up to this 
point, but, like Canute, he seems to have put his courtiers to the 
proof. " They flattered me like a dog.*' he says, but adds, 
u When the rain came to wet me once and the wind to make me 
chatter, when the thunder would not cease at my bidding, then I 
found them, then I smelt them out." 

The speediest cure for man thus degenerate is to deprive him 
of the factitious advantages out of which grows his pride of heart; 
and these, as they are given by Fortune, may at any time by a 
turn of her wheel be taken away. Strip the proud man of his 
symbols, of his wealth, position, equipage, fine apparel, and the 
respect which in a world of false appearance follows these ; sub- 
ject him to the realities of want, disease, neglect ; leave him to 
war with Nature, who will not suffer any departure from the law 
of kind, and he will soon recognize the value of human pity, soon 
feel the wickedness of his disloyalty to his distinctive human 
nature. This is the process that is wrought out with the highest 
poetical sublimity and the most powerful dramatic effect in the 
case of Lear. 

And here in passing may be remarked the poet's consummate 
mastery of his materials and the symmetry he preserves in the 
handling of his subject. Whatever story he selects for a plot, he 
is, by his manner of working, under no necessity of departing 
from those incidents in it which give it popularity, but makes it 
as complete a vehicle of his organic idea as though it were wholly 
his own invention. He is always fortunate in his selection ; his 
dice are always loaded. The original story of Lear is one of a 
pagan king in a barbarous and superstitious age. This feature 
he seizes upon as furnishing a background in perfect keeping with 
his design, which being a representation of man in his relation to 
the world or Nature, to whose laws of kind he is subject, logically 
requires that Nature should be the power to whose punishments 
for the infraction of such laws man is amenable. And, there- 
fore, although to give some mythological color to his mythical 
play mention is made of Jupiter, Juno, Apollo, and other deities, 
yet these are not the gods appealed to by Lear when he curses 
his child or when he cries for justice, but his deities then are the 
impersonations of the blind forces of Nature — vague, unknown 
divinities identified with the material heavens themselves — pow- 



KING LEAR. 181 

ers who wield the thunder and the storm, and who chasten men's 
pride and sensuality by the physical pain and suffering* these 
vices entail. Retributive justice is effected through natural law 
and material agencies — the allies of still more cruel elements in 
human character — through which man being humiliated and 
" made to feel what wretches feel " is brought to a sense of 
shame of his own cruelty and arrogance. For the dreadful deeds 
depictured are not regarded so much as offenses against Heaven, 
or as crimes against the State, as outrages upon Nature and Hu- 
manity, and therefore it is not so much remorse, as in Hamlet, 
or fear, as in Macbeth, as shame, the castigator of pride and sen- 
suality, that is the avenger in this scheme of retribution. 

Thus Lear, when brought to his right mind and a sense of 
his inhumanity to Cordelia, will by no means yield to see his 
daughter. 

" A sovereign shame so elbows him. His own unkindness 

That stripp'd her from his benediction, etc. 
. . . These things sting 

His mind so venomously that burning shame 

Detains him from Cordelia/' 

It has been pointed out that Lear is founded on a fable that is 
an image of the world and that this idea is carried through the 
play, which therefore itself becomes an image of the world, some 
features of which have been set forth in the preceding remarks. 
These were arrived at by resolving the characters into the various 
conceptions, of which they are the embodiments ; wherefore to 
test the analysis, the conceptions will be carried back and shown 
to be the bases of the characters. In fact, it will appear that the 
characters are symbols of the more prominent traits in the moral 
constitution of the world — and therefore the whole play is a de- 
velopment of " the form " of a fable that conveys a knowledge of 
the world by symbols. 

The most conspicuous figure in the play is, of course, King 
Lear, and his nature furnishes the arena on which affection and 
pride, with their allied virtues and vices, struggle with alternate 
success for mastery. An absolute monarch, he has for a lifetime 
enjoyed the greatest possible preeminence of condition, and the 
incessant homage that has been paid him has rendered him willful, 
choleric, tyrannical, and exacting. He mistakes the greatness of 
his fortune for a personal superiority, and is a type on a magnili- 



182 KIXG LEAR. 

cent scale of the pride engendered of prosperity and pampered 
by flattery. So accustomed is he to adulation that he can find 
in the quiet assurances of truthful love or the plain speaking 
of honest advice only tokens of coldness of heart and insolence 
of manners ; and so blinded has he become to the true values of 
things that he prizes more highly the pomp than he does the 
power of his place. All these infirmities of character are in- 
creased by senility. " He exhibits,*' says Goneril, who knows 
him well, " not only the infirmities of long engrafted condition. 
but therewithal the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric 
years bring with them" Still his nature, though warped by the 
pernicious influences of his station, has in it depths of affection 
that well over with bounty and kindness towards those who are 
dear to him ; and in order to secure his children's love as well as 
to relieve his age of the burthens of state, he proposes to divide 
his kingdom among them, and ever after dependent upon their 
gratitude to live with them by turns, retaining only a retinue of 
knights, together with " the name and all additions of a king" 
This retention of the empty title after parting with the substance 
of royalty lets us know from the start how much he overvalues 
the factitious dignity of his office. To yield up the kingdom and 
"all the large effects that troop with majesty** costs him no 
effort, as his habitual sense of supremacy prevents his anticipat- 
ing any diminution of personal consequence on that account ; 
but his pride clings tenaciously to the trappings and outward 
symbols of his greatness. In like manner, pride intermingles 
with his warmest affections. The love that manifests itself in 
deeds does not satisfy his heart ; he must be gratified with the 
outward and emphatic utterance of it in words also. To this 
end, he devises the test of his children's affection, not that he 
doubts their love, but he craves the flattery of hearing it pub- 
licly proclaimed. Morally blind to the fact that love is not love 
unless spontaneous, and that it never can be tempted to blazon 
itself in words for a material reward, he promises the largest 
share of the kingdom to that one of his daughters who shall be 
loudest in protestations of attachment. And in this, he again 
shows his preference of the symbol to the reality. His contriv- 
ance is but a bribe to insincerity, and ends necessarily in a dis- 
appointment, for Cordelia, from whom he expects most, but who 
will not heave 






KING LEAR. 183 

" Her heart into her mouth, but loves his majesty 
According to her bond, nor more nor less," 

declines to say anything. This refusal on her part and the con- 
sequent defeat of his project are construed by him as a slight of 
his affection and a disdain of his bounty, and he instantly blazes 
with wrath. Though " he loves her most," though she is 

" The argument of his praise, balm of his age 
The best, the dearest," 

though he has intended " to set his rest on her kind nursery," 
still all this avails nothing to check or soothe his rage ; his 
offended pride snaps asunder at once this strongest tie of his 
heart. And so closely does pride lie to what is inhuman in man's 
nature that we see in this representative character that a passion- 
ate love is turned on the instant into a passionate hate, and with 
all contempt and contumely he casts off his child forever. And 
to add solemnity to the act, he calls to witness its irrevocability 
the deities that in a pagan age embody the unknown and mys- 
terious forces of Nature, — forces which in the end are to be 
the instruments to punish this most flagrant breach of Nature's 

laws. 

" Lear, So young and so untender f 
Cor. So young, my lord, and true. 
Lear. Let it be so. Thy truth then be thy dower. 
For by the sacred radiance of the sun, 
The mysteries of Hecate, and the night, 
By all the operations of the orbs 
From whom we do exist, and cease to be, 
Here I disclaim all my paternal care, 
Propinquity and property of blood, 
And as a stranger to my heart and me 
Hold thee from this forever." 

And still further to give significance to the cruelty of this dis- 
claimer, the poet in writing this fable, in which he intends to 
make his characters symbols of the dominant principles of human 
society, causes the enraged father in his pride to avow as strong 
a sympathy with " the Scythian " and the cannibal, types of the 
extreme of inhumanity, as with his true-hearted child. 

"The barbarous Scythian, 
And he who makes his (feneration messes 
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom 
Be as well neighbor'd, pitied, and reliev'd 
As thou, my sometime daughter." 



184 KING LEAR. 






And even not yet content, the implacable poet, in order to 
mark still more strongly the inhumanity of pride, adds another 
most powerful touch to the portrait, making Lear exclaim to 
Kent, who offers to interpose : — 

" Peace, Kent, 
Come not between the dragon and his wrath. 



So be my grave my peace as here I give 
Her father's heart from her." 



Thus at the very opening of the play the leading personage, 
whose fortunes are to furnish the chief subject of interest to 
this dramatic myth, is put before us with his vices of character 
painted in the highest coloring in order to make more conspicuous 
the reaction which this excess produces ; and throughout the play 
we shall find the mythical and the dramatic blended, — the one 
by extravagance tending to give a fabulous cast to both character 
and incident, which tendency the other modifies and reconciles 
us to by the impetuous tide of natural feeling which is made to 
animate these figures. And this has a further artistic effect in 
rendering the piece a picture of the violent deeds and passions of 
a barbarous age. 

It may be added with regard to the character of Lear, that it 
is evidently drawn as a model, in which as in a diagram we see 
the predominance of worldly pride over love pushed to the ex- 
treme, not by the use of superlatives and hyperboles, such as we 
find in The Winter *s Tale, in order to idealize the characters, 
but by the use of the strongest symbols and figures to typify the 
truth put before us. 

The passage last quoted is a good example of the poet's man- 
ner of foreshadowing, in the early scenes, the catastrophe of the 
play, and of causing his characters to pass sentence upon their 
errors out of their own mouths. When Lear, in his pride of 
heart, likens himself, for fierceness and power, to " a dragon," 
he unconsciously typifies his own inhumanity, as he also speaks 
his own doom, when he utters the arrogant imprecation, " So be 
my grave my peaee as here I give her father's heart from her." 

Filled as the play is with atrocities, hideous as is the ingrati- 
tude of Regan and Goneril, there is no violation of the law of 
kind in any succeeding scene more shocking than this disruption 
of the natural tie between Lear and his devoted child. 



KING LEAR. 185 

With a fatal rashness he divides the whole kingdom between 
Goneril and Regan, and merely stipulating for a reservation of a 
mndred knights to maintain the dignity of his titular kingship, 
he gives the reality, " the sway, revenue, execution of the rest," 
to his sons-in-law, which to confirm he hands to them his crown, 
the symbol of sovereignty. 

Cordelia, " the precious unprized maid," disinherited by her 
father, " dowered with his curse and strangered with his oath," 
finds a lover and a husband in the most illustrious of her suitors, 
the king of France, whose moral insight detects the truth and 
surpassing loveliness of her character. She departs with him for 
his country, and Lear is left to find happiness in the affection 
of Goneril and Regan, whose glozing words have won for them 
the kingdom. But Goneril and Regan are extremely astute in 
this world's wisdom. They know the human heart, and they 
especially know their father, and, having secured the prize, they 
do not intend that anything shall interfere with their enjoyment 
of it. Clearly perceiving that Lear's habits of authority as well 
as his choleric disposition must inevitably lead him to manage 
those authorities he has given away, and thereby thwart their own 
supremacy, they at once take steps to deprive him of all consider- 
ation. No touch of filial feeling or of gratitude checks their 
course. They would scoff at such weakness. On the contrary, 
they abate their " ceremonious affection," instruct their menials 
to treat him with disrespect, throw his messengers into the stocks, 
and soon bring about an open rupture. The cover under which 
they hide their inhuman designs is the alleged debauchery and 
riotous conduct of his train, which, on this account, they avow a 
determination to reduce in number, with the secret purpose of 
stripping him of it altogether. This point of the fable is most 
skillfully conceived, or at least handled, as the means of developing 
Lear's pride, and showing how deeply his affections are rooted in 
what is merely external and factitious. It enables us also to 
measure arithmetically, as it were, the depth of the wounds and 
the intensity of the torture that is inflicted upon him; for Lear 
has entered on a new course of life, and in his old age has been 
put to school. Just in proportion as his train is reduced does 
his misery increase, whilst his estimate of his daughters' kindness 
is based exclusively upon the number of followers either will allow 
him to retain. When Goneril first cuts down his hundred knights 



186 KING LEAR. 

to fifty, her tone of reprimand and disrespect, the first, perhaps, 
he had ever heard addressed to him, and his sudden perception of 
his loss of influence, fill him with so much amazement that he 
almost doubts his personal identity. 

" Does any here know me ? Why, this is not Lear. 
. . . who is it can tell me who I am ? " 

The Fool pertinently ejaculates, " Lear's shadow" But the 
truth flashes upon him, and pouring out the bitterness of his 
heart in a father's curse, — which takes the form of a prayer to 
Nature for retribution (he has only ivords now, terrible ones it 
is true, but still only words to manifest his displeasure), — he 
hastens away to Regan for sympathy and aid ; but finding that 
Regan is even more pitiless than her sister, and will allow him 
but five and twenty followers, he turns again to Goneril and 
says : — 

" I ? 11 go with thee, 

Thy fifty yet doth double five and twenty, 

And thou art twice her love." 

Here, again, we see in this representative character how deeply 
pride has struck its roots into his nature, and that it is this des- 
perate clinging to his train, the last remnant of his royal state 
and only prop of his pride, that occasions those reactions and 
alternations of passion, those bursts of rage and cries of lacerated 
feeling, those fierce imprecations on the one hand and piteous 
pleadings on the other, which mark how terribly his bosom is 
convulsed between wounded affection and pride. But pride, of 
course, carries the day. Rather than submit patiently to be 
deprived of the accessories of his rank, or purchase personal com- 
fort by giving up all marks of sovereignty, he will 

" Abjure all roofs and choose 
To wage against the enmity o' the air ; 
To be a comrade with the wolf and owl, 
Necessity's sharp pinch." 

And in an agony of mind and unattended save by the Fool, he 
rushes forth into the night and storm, alike ignorant and reck- 
less of what may betide him. The same vice of character that 
had prompted his inhuman rejection of Cordelia has proved his 
scourge and made him an outcast. Isolated from almost all man- 
kind, he is subjected to the sharp teachings of experience, and is 



KING LEAR. 187 

the victim of injustice himself. Heretofore his tyranny had been 
protected from punishment by power, but now the ban is on his 
own head, and he is brought to a condition where, stripped of all 
consequence, he must contend single-handed with Nature, who, — 

" With sheets of fire, with bursts of horrid thunder, 
With groans of roaring wind and rain," 

summons her forces to chastise his arrogance and his infraction of 
her laws. 

The question has been mooted whether Lear surfers more as a 
king or as a father, that is, whether he is injured more in his 
pride or his affections. Here we find the principle of reaction or 
polarity that runs throughout the play woven into the character 
itself ; for it is obvious that his sufferings in both capacities are 
vastly increased by their mutual reaction. The king is wounded 
through the father, the father through the king. To be treated 
with insolence and contempt, to be stripped of all marks of re- 
spect, and to be driven forth into the storm, though this treat- 
ment were received at the hands of strangers or enemies, would 
be grievous enough for a monarch grown old in the luxuries and 
homage of a court to bear ; but when this flaying alive of his 
pride comes from his children, to whom his " frank heart gave 
all," and from whom he is entitled to receive the utmost consid- 
eration and kindness, his misery must be incalculably increased. 
So, on the other hand, the ingratitude of his children, though 
manifested in matters comparatively trifling, would make him 
heart-sore and wretched, but when their heartlessness is evinced 
by degrading him in the very point dearest of all others to his 
pride, it is more than man's nature can bear, and, in his case, 
ends in madness. This interaction of pride and affection runs 
through the whole character. In the mad scenes we have now a 
burst of indignation as a father, now an assumption of dignity as 
a king, and sometimes a union of the two feelings as in the imagi- 
nary trial of Goneril, whom he arraigns for having " kicked the 
poor king, her father ." 

Lear exposed upon the heath to the storm bears up for a while 
against the raging elements, the energy of his passion rising 
sublime over the sublimities of Nature, but the contest is an 
unequal one. 

" Man's nature cannot carry 
The affliction nor the fear," — 



188 KING LEAR. 

and the old king is fain to ask his " dreadful summoners grace." 
Forced back upon his humanity by his physical sufferings, he is 
led to reflect upon the poor naked wretches everywhere who are 
exposed to the ills of poverty and the hardships of nature, and 
forgetting the king in the man he utters by way of prayer these 
sentiments, instinct with the deepest humanity : — 

" Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, 
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, 
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, 
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you 
From seasons such as these ? Oh, I have tcfen 
Too little care of this / Take physic, pomp ; 
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel ; 
That thou may'st shake the superflux to them, 
And shew the heavens more just" 

Act III. Sc. 3. 

This is the lesson he has learned, and a vast stride it is in 
self-knowledge. 

While in this mood of mind, he is suddenly confronted with 
Tom o' Bedlam." 

" The basest and most poorest shape 
That ever penury in contempt of man 
Brought near to beast" 

The utter wretchedness of this object challenges Lear's attention 
and gives his wandering mind a point to fix upon. He takes a 
sudden and wondrous liking for the naked beggar, unable as yet 
to perceive that his misery can spring from other than moral 
causes similar to those that occasion his own. And it is curious 
to observe that in this juxtaposition of the king and the beggar — 
the two poles of society — the poet is careful to save our sensi- 
bilities from too rude a shock at the degradation of the monarch 
by portraying his conduct as an effect of mental derangement, 
thus winning our sympathy for his hero through the same class- 
feeling and social pride of which at the very same moment he is 
showing the hollowness. The scene is a most impressive tableau 
which exposes the emptiness of that pride, which, in actual life, 
most frequently and conspicuously manifests itself in dress, ap- 
parel, and equipage. They who array themselves in purple and 
fine linen shrink from all social contact or familiar intercourse 
with the peasant or laborer in his homely garb, and the two classes 
stand apart as if belonging to different spheres of being. The 



KING LEAR. 189 

attire is held to be significant of the standing of the wearer and 
to some extent a symbol having a moral meaning. 

The illustration of this feature of society falls in strictly with 
the method of the play, which demands a constant exhibition of a 
regard for the symbol rather than for the thing signified. But 
the whole of society is epitomized by the king and the beggar, 
who, comprehending between them all ranks and conditions, enable 
the poet to extend the application of the law of kind to the human 
race at large. When Lear first encounters " poor Tom," his mind 
has been so violently shaken from its settled convictions by the 
overthrow of his faith in filial piety that he is ready to receive 
new impressions, however repugnant to his previous mental habits. 
Time was when he would have looked, as Gloster did, upon the 
starving Bedlamite as " a fellow " to make him think " a man a 
worm," but now that he has been invaded to the skin by the piti- 
less storm and brought to the depths of misery, he discovers with 
somewhat of surprise that he shares a common nature with the shiv- 
ering wretch before him. " Oh, I have taken too little care of 
this," is his sudden confession. He begins to ponder, apparently 
for the first time, what man is in himself. He gazes at the model 
then before him and asks, " Is man no more than this ? Consider 
him well. Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep 
no wool, the cat no perfume." He sees that apparel is but sophis- 
tication, and that the beggar with " his uncovered body " is " the 
thing itself" All else is superfluity. And in order that his 
practice may not lag behind his theory, he begins to tear off his 
own garments. "Off, off, you lendings." Under the teachings 
of this " his philosopher," Lear clearly perceives the emptiness of 
show, " of silks that make proud the flesh that wear them," and 
that beneath the rags of the beggar and the robes of the king lies 
hid the same identical Humanity. The cure of his pride is com- 
plete ; for, though in the disorder of his mind, he afterwards 
through force of lifelong habit affects the kingly style, yet he 
never recants his adherence to the doctrines taught him by his 
"learned Theban." And at the last, when restored to reason, 
he recognizes the infinite littleness of pride and no longer reverts 
to his kingship, his hundred knights, or his loss of station, but 
though a prisoner in the hands of his enemies, finds perfect peace 
and happiness in parental affection and his reunion with Cordelia. 

His humility and his sense of "the blessedness of being little" 



190 KING LEAR. 

are expressed in the following lines. — which are filled, it will be 
observed, with the notion of polarity or action and reaction. 

" Cor. Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters ? 
Lear. Xo, no. no. no ! Come, let 's away to prison ; 
TTe two alone will sing like birds i' the cage : 
When thou dost ask me blessing, I '11 kneel down, 
And ask of thee forgiveness : So we 11 live, 
And pray and sing and tell old tales, and laugh 
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues 
Talk of court-news ; and we '11 talk with them too, — 
TT7^ loses, and who wins : who 's in, who's out, 
And take upon us the mystery of things, 
As if we were God's spies ; and we 11 wear out 
In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones 
That ebb and flow by the moon." 

After Lear has lost his reason, he is without purpose and con- 
sequently without interest as a moral agent. A man irresponsi- 
ble for his conduct and unconscious of his condition may excite 
our pity, but cannot awaken our moral sentiments : he is a mere 
spectacle. But the interest in Lear is maintained through his 
symbolical character. He is a Icing, and as such is a symbol; he 
is a king without power and therefore a symbol without signifi- 
cance; nay more, he is a king without reason, and therefore the 
sham of the world. He is. moreover, a pathetic type of the mu- 
tability of fortune. These facts are constantly forced upon us. 
He enters with his crown of noxious weeds, a fitting emblem of 
factitious dignity and of the vices and passions that attend it. 
His words are. " Xo. they cannot touch me for coining, / am 
the Icing himself ; " and in reply to Gdoster's question, " Is 't not 
the king ? " he exclaims, "Ay. every inch ei king," — and then 
breaks out into a tirade against the ways of the world, its hy- 
pocrisy and corruption, in which he utters truths generalized from 
his experience as a magistrate and displays a knowledge of men 
which makes us wonder at his want of wisdom when in his senses. 
His insanity, though marked by occasional incoherence, stimulates 
his mind and renews its vigor. And observe how he illustrates 
by symbols, — * ; Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar? 
And the creature run from the cur ? There thou mightst see the 
great image of authority : a dog's obeyed, in office." 

" Through tatter d clothes small vices do appear, 
Robes and furr'd gowns hide all," etc., — 






KING LEAR. 191 

and exclaiming " Come, come, I am a king, my masters, know you 
not that?" he makes his exit, running, a spectacle which draws 
from a " Gentleman " the comment, — 

" A sight most pitiful in the meanest wretch, 
Past speaking of in a king" — 

in which last words more is meant than meets the ear. 

The elements of character which are mingled in Lear are dis- 
tributed among his children, — Regan and Goneril carrying sel- 
fishness and pride to a pitch of heartlessness that shocks humanity, 
while Cordelia on the other hand exalts affection into the highest 
and holiest form of filial love. 

Goneril and Regan, though discriminated by some fine shad- 
ings, are stamped so nearly with the same die that they may be 
considered together as one character. They obviously represent 
the spirit of worldliness, — a compound of greed, perfidy, pride, 
love of riches, power, distinction, and personal and sensual grati- 
fication. From their pure, unadulterated self-love, one might sup 
pose them destitute of moral perceptions and a moral standard, 
but on the contrary they clearly perceive moral distinctions but 
are utterly indifferent to them. In fact, they prefer evil to 
good and are examples of that obliquity of mind which attends 
great depravity of heart. Goodness to them is foolishness. 
When Albany upbraids Goneril with filial ingratitude, she impa- 
tiently interrupts what she considers his preaching, and says, 
"No more, the text is foolish ;" and when he points to her fiend- 
ishness in driving her father mad, and bids her turn her eyes 
inward on her own deformity, she contemptuously ejaculates, " O 
vain fool ! " Yet the skill they display in working on the moral 
sentiments of others shows that they appreciate the value which 
the world sets upon virtue. They are adepts in policy, in flat- 
tery, in false pretense. When it suits their purposes, they are 
full of kind words and courteous manners. For their most atro- 
cious acts they are never at a loss to assign a plausible reason, 
though at times they disdain to pay even this tribute to virtue. 

In the execution of their designs they exhibit great worldly 
prudence. They know the value of celerity of action. They are 
distrustful and watchful of every contingency and are always on 
the alert. 

Their love is animal and shameless — like that of tigresses for 



192 KING LEAR. 

their mates. They speak of it openly, they talk of it to their 
menials, and ask the plainest questions. They are both inflamed 
by the beauty of the sleek deadly Edmund, who cares for neither, 
sports with each in turn, and meditates the destruction of both. 
Their rivalry necessarily leads to one destroying the other. 
Goneril poisons her sister, but in the very moment of her success 
she is exposed, Edmund is slain, and she grown desperate takes 
her own life, — an act which draws from her husband the ap- 
propriate comment : — 

" This judgment of the heavens that makes us tremble 
Touches us not with pity." 

They may each be taken as an image or symbol of that spirit 
that is sometimes called " the world, the flesh, and the devil." 

From these patterns of extreme wordliness and wickedness, the 
mind turns with satisfaction and relief to Cordelia, a model of 
filial piety. This feeling is wholly practical and manifests it- 
self in conduct. With the highest sense of duty it combines the 
tenderest love ; it is, therefore, marked by willing obedience to 
rightful authority, and when exalted and spiritualized, as it is 
found in the love of a daughter for an aged and infirm father, is 
the purest emotion of the heart. It is wholly disinterested, seek- 
ing and craving no reward except from its own exercise and a 
sense of duty performed, — a duty, however, which is the sponta- 
neous impulse of the soul. Cordelia is an exponent of this high 
and holy feeling and shows how angelic human nature may be- 
come through love and truth. 

Cordelia is wholly unworldly ; she looks only to the substance 
and inward truth of things. Her disregard of the things of 
sense is observable in her reply to Burgundy, who declines her 
hand for the reason that she has been deprived of her dower. 
She says : — 

" Peace be with Burgundy. 
Since that respects of fortune are his love, 
I shall not be his wife." 

Being an inward impulse that operates on the will, filial love 
seldom finds expression in words, but reveals itself in works, still 
adding deed to deed. And so Cordelia is a doer and not a 
talker. In her the speechless language by which the body sym- 
bolizes the workings of the mind — so fully illustrated as will be 



KING LEAR. 193 

seen throughout the play — becomes acts of highest devotion and 
self-sacrifice. It is this reality in works and disdain of words — 
this preference of the substance to the symbol — that gives the 
character that profound reserve which is sometimes mistaken for 
coldness and insensibility. 

It was a moral impossibility for Cordelia to vie with her sisters 
in flattery for a portion of the kingdom. She tells her father that 
she loves him "according to her bond," the force and compass of 
which obligation, as she views it, we cannot well estimate until, 
taught by her subsequent conduct, we are enabled in some degree 
to measure the depth and strength of her filial love. Deep as is 
her affection for her father, however, she loves truth more. 

" Lear. So young and so untender ? 
Cor. So young, my lord, and true" 

Unworldly as Cordelia is, she knows the world and easily reads 
the minds of others. Though w T hat she well intends she will do 
before she speaks, she is yet aware that there is a glib and oily 
art to speak and purpose not, in which her sisters are perfect 
adepts. Her knowledge, however, of the corruption of the world 
does not taint her mind, nor does a sense of her own goodness 
infect her with pride. With the utmost humility she says to 
Kent : — 

" O thou good Kent, how shall / live and work 
To match thy goodness ! My life will be too short 
And every measure fail me." 

Cordelia may be regarded as a household divinity, — not so 
much one who is worshiped, as one who blesses others, one who 
hourly puts good thoughts into good works, and thus becomes 
an earthly type of divine love, an adumbration of that Truth, 
whose Word is his Deed. 

In no point are the antithesis of soul and sense and the separa- 
tion of the symbol from the inward reality made more frequently 
manifest than in the sentiment of love. Sensuality, like Pride, 
pays no regard but to the outward show ; it is attracted by the 
bloom of beauty alone, and is intent only on physical gratification. 
Of this error, Gloster is the representative, and in this he resem- 
bles the mass of mankind. Morally, there is nothing to distin- 
guish Gloster from the generality; he is a man of good intentions 
and amiable disposition, but lax in principle, governed by habit 
13 



194 KING LEAR. 






and impulse : disposed to trim and shuffle under accusation, but 
courageous enough when cornered to defy his enemies and brave 
their wrath : intellectually, however, he is a most marked example 
of a trait of character, which more than any other is common to 
all men. Credulity and the influence of imagination over the 
reason, to which perhaps every man — not excepting the man of 
the best balanced mind — is in some degree subject, and to which 
the superstitions and errors of opinion that prevail throughout the 
world are due. are carried in Grloster as far as they can go. or at 
least so far as to make the character strongly typical. It is quite 
in keeping with his animal temperament that he should believe 
in astrology and planetary influence, and attribute to material 
agencies effects that can only result from moral causes. 

In Gloster's case the great law of cause and consequence as a 
retributive agency is plainly visible. Out of his sensuality and 
his disloyalty to the law of kind. Nature raises up an avenger in 
his illegitimate offspring. Edmund, through whose treachery he is 
stripped of title and estate, deprived of his eyes, and driven out 
to die. The unspeakable misery to which he is reduced by this 
vicissitude of fortune develops his better nature and opens his 
mental and moral perceptions. He arrives at some degree of self- 
knowledge and finds that he wants no eyes: "he stumbled when 
he saw." 

In his wanderings he meets with Edgar, who becomes his guide 
and saves him from suicide and despair by working upon his 
credulity and making him believe that a miracle has been wrought 
in his behalf. Upon learning, however, that it was his son Edgar 
(whom he had before so cruelly wronged ) who had thus followed 
his sad steps, he is not able to support the conflict of feeling, but 

••' His flaw'd heart. 
'Tvrixt two extremes of passion, grief and joy, 
Burst smiling ly." 

In Edmund. Pride and Worldliness attain a maximum even 
through the influence of Shame. An illegitimate son of Grloster, 
he inherits the love of consideration of his class, but has grown 
up with the consciousness of being branded with baseness. He 
hears his father speak of his mother in a tone of the grossest dis- 
respect, and confess that he has often blushed to acknowledge 
him as a son. Not that he is at all concerned at the dishonor of 
his parents ; he himself makes it the theme of his coarse wit. 



KING LEAR. 195 

Nay more, he cherishes a secret pride in his own base birth, and 
claims a special excellence from the fierce passion to which he 
owes his origin. Yet though thus inherently depraved, he is en- 
dowed with qualities which inspire him with high self-estimation. 
A strong will, a keen intellect, and great personal beauty enable 
him to measure himself against others with a sense of superiority, 
and he therefore questions the justice of loading him with dis- 
grace, when he is in all respects equal to " honest madam's issue." 
To be thus condemned without cause confounds moral distinctions 
in his mind, quenches all sentiments of honor, and develops to the 
utmost his inherent depravity. The instinctive desire of esteem 
and of love is smothered in him by the world's scorn, which forces 
back his sympathies, embittering his spirit and rendering doubly 
intense his self-love. To his scoffing spirit, the odium attached 
to illegitimacy rests on no better grounds than the favor that is 
awarded to primogeniture ; both alike are conventional and due 
to the " plague of custom and the curiosity of nations." Inas- 
much then as prejudice unjustly excludes him from social advan- 
tages, he makes " Nature his goddess ; to her law his services are 
bound ; " but this law to which he professes allegiance, so far 
from being Nature's law of human kind (on which must rest all 
social and civil order), is one which debases all human ties to 
animal affinities. He sees clearly enough, however, that opinion 
must be humored; that the world worships wealth and power, 
and that " robes and furr'd gowns hide all ; " wealth and power, 
therefore, he is determined at all hazards to have, and find in the 
world's servility a shield against its injustice. His readiest road 
to success seems to lie over the ruin of his brother and father — 
to be effected under circumstances that will devolve the family 
title and estate upon himself. He says : — 

" A credulous father, and a brother noble, 
Whose nature is so far from doing harms, 
That he suspects none ; on whose foolish honesty 
My practices ride easy : I see the business — 
Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit : 
All with me 's meet that I can fashion fit '." 

The chief characteristic of his mind is cunning : he is a master 
of feigned circumstance and false pretense; and ii may be noted 
that in carrying out his purpose he adopts a device which Bacon, 
in his Essay on Cunning, mentions as one of the tricks of men of 
that class, as thus : — 



196 KING LEAK. 






" Some procure themselves to be surprised at such times as it 
is like the party they work upon will suddenly come upon them ; 
and to he found with a letter in their hand, ... to the end they 
may be apposed (questioned) of those things which of themselves 
they are desirous to utter." 

So Edmund, having counterfeited a letter of his brother Edgar, 
puts himself where his father will suddenly come upon him, and 

says : — 

" If thl<* letter speed, 
And my good invention thrive, Edmund the base 
Shall top the legitimate. 

Enter Gloster. 

Glo. . . . Edmund ! How now ? what news ? 
Edm. So please your lordship, none. 

[Putting up the letter, 
Glo. Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter ? 
Edm. I know no news, my lord. 
Glo. What paper were you reading ? 
Edm. Nothing, my lord. 

Glo. No ? What needed, then, that terrible dispatch of it into your 
pocket ? " etc., etc. 

With much affected reluctance, Edmund gives up the letter, 
which contains a proposition to put Gloster to death. 

By this infamous device, and other base calumnies, he causes 
Edgar to be driven from his home with a price set upon his head, 
while his father he consigns to misery worse than death by the 
most detestable treachery. Gloster, speaking of the eclipses and 
what they portended, had said : " Machinations, hollowness, 
treachery follow us disquietly to our graves ; " and this he finds 
verified but too truly in his own case, these evils being fully 
embodied in his son, Edmund. If Edmund has a soul, it is as 
the devils have one — utterly depraved and loveless. Himself a 
product of the violation of the law of kind, he is the mainspring 
of the plot through which such violations in others are punished. 
Almost every character in the piece is brought to misery or death, 
directly or indirectly, through his agency. He is not sanguinary 
but pitiless, and so bent is he on hiding under the glitter of rank 
the shame of his birth that no villainy is too heinous, no treachery 
too black, no atrocity too cruel for him to perpetrate. He gains 
the family title and estate, becoming Duke of Gloster, and having 
acquired high favor at Court, he opens an intrigue with the two 



KING LEAR. 197 

Queens, who are both enamored of him, — not that he prizes their 
love, for he is too spiritually fiendish to care for sensual vices, 
but in order that he may use them as stepping stones to supreme 
power. All goes swimmingly with him for a time, and he seems 
to be the very figure and pattern of a successful villain, but at 
last retribution overtakes him, the wheel comes full circle, and in 
the hour of his triumph he falls beneath the sword of his brother, 
whom he had so cruelly wronged ; yet even with his dying breath 
he mocks at the scorn of the world by boasting of the love of 
Goneril and Regan, whose tragical ends are a proof of his per- 
sonal influence ; and to the last exhibits the exultation and pride 
in success that are born of shame. 

" Yet Edmund was belov'd. * 

The one the other poison 'd for my sake, 
And after slew herself" 

Edmund, by his dark treachery and great personal beauty is a 
fitting symbol of the speciousness and villainy of the world. 

Edgar's is a character of great beauty ; second in that respect 
only to Cordelia. Like her, he is disinherited and driven from 
a father's presence : like her, too, he retains his filial feeling un- 
diminished by any sense of wrong. Noble and confiding, he is 
easily supplanted by his brother, Edmund, and ruined in name 
and estate ; a ban is set upon his head, he is hunted for his life, 
and is obliged " to shift into a madman's rags," yet still preserves 
his dignity of mind and sweetness of disposition. He accepts his 
misfortunes with a fortitude that seems almost to deprive them 
of their sting. He is the philosopher of misery, and by reflect- 
ing on the vicissitudes of fortune derives comfort from the very 
extremity of his sufferings. 

1 ' To be worst, 
The lowest and most dejected thing of Fortune 
Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear ; 
The lamentable change is from the best ; 
The worst returns to laughter. 

. . . But who comes here ? 
My father poorly led ? World, world, world I 
But that thy strange mutations make us hate thee, 
Life would not yield to age." 

Experience teaches Edgar the full value of human kindness, 
and like Lear and his father, in ready sympathy with whose suf- 



198 KING LEAR. 

ferings he forgets his own, he learns the wisdom that is taught by 
the chastening strokes of Heaven. He describes himself as 

" A most poor man, made tame to Fortune's blows, 
Who by the art of known and feeling sorroivs 
Is pregnant to good pity" 

Edgar's abject condition and disguise as poor Tom o' Bedlam 
enables the poet to present him, without his losing our respect, as 
a symbol of the misery that follows vice, while in his real char- 
acter he is also an example of unmerited adversity stoutly borne 
and finally conquered. 

Another character who is ungoverned by any base or worldly 
consideration is Kent. As Cordelia exemplifies a true obedience 
to the la\^ of kind in the family, so Kent is a model of fidelity in 
social and political relations, as of a servant to a master or a sub- 
ject to a king. The more important of these relations, Kent thus 

sums up : — 

" Royal Lear, 
Whom I have ever honored as my king, 
Lov'd as my father, as my master followed, 
As my great patron thought on in my prayers," etc. 

On this species of loyalty rests civil and social order, and there- 
fore it holds a prominent place in a play that is the image of the 
world. 

In the simplicity of his manhood, Kent is morally as much 
"the thing itself" as poor Tom is physically. A nobleman of 
the highest rank, he yet holds title and station at their true 
worth ; he regards them but as symbols, and is ready to imperil 
all for the sake of duty. He knows that true fidelity requires 
sometimes sharp admonition from the servant to the master, that 
complaisance and obsequiousness are often breaches of trust, and 
he does not hesitate to rebuke Lear's " hideous rashness " in giv- 
ing away his kingdom. Heedless of his master's rage, he tells 

him : — 

" Be Kent unmannerly 
When Lear is mad. What wouldst thou do, old man ? 
Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak 
When power to flattery bows ? To plainness honour's bound 
When majesty stoops to folly." 

His zeal for his master, running contrary to his master's inclina- 
tion, is rewarded — as the way of the world is — with displeasure 



KING LEAK. 199 

and punishment. He is banished; and takes leave in a speech 
made up of antitheses, by which he puts in pointed contrast the 
reality and the symbol : — 

" Then farewell, king, since thus thou wilt appear, 
Freedom lives hence and banishment is here. 

The gods to their dear shelter take thee, maid, \_To Cordelia. 
Who justly think'st and hast most rightly said, 
And your large speeches may your deeds approve, 

[To Regan and Goneril. 
That good effects may spring from words of love. 
Thus, Kent, O princes, bids you all adieu ; 
He '11 shape his old course in a country new." 

Relinquishing title and estate, he adopts the garb of a menial 
and returns in this disguise to follow his master's fortunes and 
protect him as far as possible from the disastrous consequences of 
his folly. His love seeks no expression in words, but shines forth 
in services. He says : — 

" Now, banish'd Kent, 
If thou canst serve where thou dost stand condemned 
(So may it come) thy master whom thou lov'st 
Shall find thee full of labors" 

In this assumed character he stands forth most prominently as 
a type of devotion to rightful authority and of service for love's 
sake. In the nobility of his nature Kent claims only to be " a 

man" 

" Lear. What art thou ? 
Kent. A man" 

And in answer to Lear's inquiry, " What dost thou profess ? " 
Kent describes what it is to be " a man : " — 

" I do profess to be no less than I seem ; to serve him truly 
that will put me in trust ; to love him that is honest ; to converse 
with him that is wise and says little ; to fear judgment ; to fight 
when I cannot choose ; and to eat no fish," which translated into 
other words may mean that he is sincere, trustworthy, a lover of 
truth; that he pursues wisdom and cherishes humility; that he is 
courageous and not quarrelsome, and is free from superstition. 

Kent is chiefly distinguished, however, by his open nature and 
love of truth, and as Caius he affects a plainness of speech that 
minces no phrase, and a bluntness of manner that would ill 
become a character of higher rank. It is true that ho gets into 
the stocks by it, which is typical, however, of the fate of those 



200 KING LEAR. 

who speak im welcome truths. He lays down, moreover, the n 

of truth. — 

" All my reports go with the modest truth. 
Xo more, nor clipped, but so/ J — 

which is virtually the same formula which Cordelia had stated as 
the rule of love and obedience — "according to my bond, nor 
more, nor less" — and which evidently is the rule also of justice. 

Before the battle between the forces of Cordelia and Albany. 
Kent tells us. — 

"My point and period will be thoroughly wrought 
Or well or ill. as this day's battle "s fought." — 

thus showing that all with him is staked upon Lear's fortunes : 
and after Lear's death, he stops not to consult for his own good ; 
his love reaches even beyond the grave : for being ottered one 
half the kingdom by Albany, this true hero tells them that his 
course is the path of duty and far different from one that has 
title or power or even life in view. 

••I have a journey, sir. shortly to go : 
My Us me : I must not say, Xo." 

As the menial. Caius. he — and Edgar is another example — 
is an instance of truth, merit, nobility hidden in obscurity and 
neglect. 

The opposite of Kent is Oswald, who is as thoroughly worldly 
and corrupt as Kent is pure and noble. Of him Kent says : — 

u Xo contraries hold more antipathy 
Than I and such a knave." 

Oswald represents the obsequiousness of the world to riches 
and power. Kent had. as a faithful servant, braved his master's 
wrath by rebuking him for his conduct towards Cordelia : — 

" Revoke thy doom. 
Or whilst I can vent clamor from my throat 
I '11 tell thee thou dost evil/' 

Of this manliness Oswald has no share : on the contrary, he is 
a fawning, smiling villain, who has no will but the wishes of 
Goneril. his mistress. All complaisance, he falls in with every 
humor of his superiors as men of his class ever do, 

" Smooth every passion 
That in the nature of their lords rebels. 
Bring oil to tire, snow to their colder moods. 



KING LEAR. 201 

Renege, affirm and turn their halcyon beaks 
With every gale and vary of their masters." 

Oswald is so base that he is proud of his baseness. He is one 
of those convenient superserviceable knaves who are commonly 
to be met with in the train of greatness, and whose ambition is 
fully gratified by being used confidentially in the villainy of their 
masters. To be on close terms with them that the world wor- 
ships, though it be only in being employed in the vilest and 
meanest services, is sufficient to fill the souls of men of this class. 
They are slaves 

" Whose easy borrow 'd pride 
Dwells in the fickle grace of them they follow," — 

and Oswald, the vile go-between of Edmund and Goneril, even in 
his dying hour shows his love of his base employment and makes 
a mockery of truth by his fidelity to wickedness. Such men are 
the very antithesis of all that is heroic in human nature. 

Lear, being founded on a myth, partakes of a mythical char- 
acter. All the plays (exclusive of the Histories) are in some 
sort myths ; they are views of life which are capable of a gen- 
eral application. But Lear is a myth which has this special fea- 
ture : it represents the world and man as having themselves, like 
myths, external forms which are symbolical of an indwelling and 
invisible life and meaning. And with that perfect mastery of dra- 
matic unity with which this dramatist always causes his leading 
conceptions to permeate every part of his work, the incidents of 
the piece are drawn with a certain extravagance, which suggests 
the fabulous. The division of the kingdom, the colloquy of the 
king and the beggar on the heath, the blinding of Gloster, the 
meeting of the blind man and the madman, the combat of the 
brothers, the bringing in by Lear of the dead body of Cordelia, — 
these are incidents that are carried to the extreme limit of proba- 
bility and even beyond ; they are tableaux that speak to the eye, 
and like symbols convey a meaning ; it is evident, moreover, that 
this exaggeration is not for the purpose of idealizing the story, 
but to imitate the mythical. An old king, holding discourse 
during a night of tempest upon a desolate heath with a mad 
beggar, is not a picture of actual life but is clearly invented to 
point a moral and convey a meaning of much wider scope than 
the mere story of an individual. And in like manner, as a myth 



202 KING LEAK. 

is symbolical, the characters of the piece are converted into quasi 
images or symbols of leading moral facts in human life. They 
are more than types of classes, although they are these too ; they 
are representatives of fundamental principles that must enter in 
some degree into every picture of human nature. This effect is 
given to them by the characteristic of each being pushed to the 
utmost extreme, and as the qualities they represent are opposites, 
they exhibit a polarity, or the extreme points of opposite princi- 
ples. In Regan and Goneril, the spirit of worldliness is carried 
so far as to divest the characters of humanity, of shame, of 
female modesty ; they are called " fiends " and " tigers." At the 
opposite pole is Cordelia, who represents a heavenly purity of 
soul. In like manner, Edmund's treachery to his father is op- 
posed to Edgar's filial truth ; Kent's manhood and heroism to the 
Steward's meanness and cowardice; Gloster's credulity to Ed- 
mund's cunning ; Lear's folly to the Fool's wisdom. So, too, the 
fierce and vindictive Cornwall is set off against the humane and 
honorable Albany. In each of the characters, its leading trait is 
pushed to an extreme that renders it single-sided and symbolical. 
This tragedy represents man made wise in the school of ex- 
perience. And considering the fondness of this playwriter for 
wrapping up double meanings in one word, and also that the play 
is imitative of a myth or story with a hidden meaning, and more- 
over that it represents the getting of wisdom as the highest duty 
of man, it is more than probable that the name of the leading 
character and also the title of the piece had for him a significance 
connected with his treatment of the subject. Not only does the 
character of Lear but also those of Gloster and Edgar display 
that lere, lore or wisdom that is attained through sorrow and 
suffering. They are all brought by the lessons of experience to a 
wise and deep perception of the true sources of happiness. From 
this point of view we can clearly see the propriety and meaning 
of the character of the Fool and its consonancy with the rest of 
the tragedy. For the Fool, like most others of his class in the 
Shakespearian drama, embodies and gives utterance to those just 
views, a departure from which occasions the errors of the more 
serious and responsible characters. Hence his knowledge of the 
world, his maxims of prudence, his moral wisdom. He, more- 
over, embodies the spirit of a myth, the aim of which is to teach 
wisdom by symbol and figure. He is an embodied fable. He 



KING LEAR. 203 

talks in figurative sayings throughout, and, like another 2Esop, 
points his aphorisms with illustrations drawn from the animal 
kingdom. Thus he says, " Winter is not gone yet, if the wild 
geese fly that way." " We'll set thee to school to an ant, to 
teach thee there 's no laboring in winter." " When thou gav'st 
thy children thy kingdom, thou carried'st thine ass on thy back 
over the dirt." " Let go thy hold when a great wheel runs down 
a hill lest it break thy neck with following it, but the great one 
that goes upward, let him draw thee after." And so throughout 
the Fool speaks in parable and similitudes. As soon as he enters 
he gives Kent his coxcomb as a symbol of folly (" for taking 
one's part that is out of favor "), and then " teaches " Lear " a 
speech " that consists of a string of aphorisms which contain the 
pith and marrow of worldly prudence. His acrid wit makes him 
a " pestilent gall " to his master, but he follows that master's 
fallen fortunes with the faithfulest affection. Though he con- 
tinually preaches the wisdom of self-love, he as continually prac- 
tices the noble folly of self-sacrifice. This latter, however, proves 
his practical wisdom and the entire truth of his nature. 

And in the Fool's knowledge of the world and in the satirical 
wit with which he lashes the deceits and hypocrisies of Goneril 
and Regan, he is a good dramatic representative of that doctrine 
termed by Bacon " Serious Satire., or the Insides of Things" 
w r hich treats of the impostures and hypocrisies which are opposed 
to the virtues and duties proper to the different relations of life. 
It may be noted that the title of this doctrine, which in the Latin 
is " Tractatus de Interioribus Serum" is the same which Bacon 
gives (in his letter to Fulgentio) to a Latin translation of his 
Essays, "Sermones Fideles sive Interiora rerum;" and from the 
character of the Essays, which are the very pith of worldly wis- 
dom, and of which it has been well said that they seem scraps 
escaped from Shakespeare's desk, we can better judge what know- 
ledge he intended to include in his doctrine of " Serious Satire 
or the Insides of Things" It was in fact that knowledge of men 
and the world of which he was himself so great a master that 
Hallam, in his estimate of his genius, says of him: " w He was 
more eminently the philosopher of human than of general nature. 
Hence, he is exact as well as profound in all his reflections on 
civil life and mankind . ... If we compare what may be found 
in the sixth, seventh, and eighth Books De Augnienti*, in the 



204 KING LEAR. 






Essays, the History of Henry VII., and the various short treatises 
contained in his works on moral and political wisdom, and on 
human nature, from experience of which all such wisdom is drawn, 
with the Rhetoric, Ethics, and Politics of Aristotle, or with the 
historians most celebrated for their deep insight into civil society 
and human character, — with Thucydides, Tacitus, Philip de 
Comines, Machiavel, Davila, Hume, — we shall, I think, find that 
one man may almost be compared with all of these together." 
Int. Lit. Europ. Part III. ch. iii. § 75. 

This was the knowledge, or at least such part of it as pertains 
to the deceits and hypocrisies of men, that Bacon would have 
included in Serious Satire or Insides of Things, a doctrine, more- 
over, which he enumerates among the deficiencies of learning, on 
which account it is more surprising that it should be so well 
imaged in the character of the Fool with his seriousness, his 
satire, and his knowledge of the world. 

The characters having been examined as impersonations of the 
main conceptions in the scheme of the piece, or as coordinated 
members of the piece considered as a work of art, it may now be 
inquired whether they have not, in the constitution of their minds, 
their mental processes, their speeches and actions, also, a signifi- 
cance as examples or illustrations of certain tenets of philosophy. 
For inasmuch as success in life depends upon a knowledge of 
men, a desire for such knowledge will in the end create, as 
sciences or arts, both Morals and Policy. 

But it may be observed that Lear, being an image of the world, 
the poet has seen fit to comprehend within it the whole circle of 
Philosophy, which, according to Bacon, has for its objects, God, 
Nature, and Man. 

Philosophy is divided into Speculative and Operative, or into 
the Inquisition of Causes and. the Production of Effects. And 
the inquiry, therefore, may first be made how this general or main 
division as laid down by Bacon is reflected in the dialogue and 
action of the piece. 

And to this " the form " of the play will directly lead us, for 
the purpose of a fable is to impart a knowledge of the world or 
of men through symbols ; therefore when this " form " is devel- 
oped into a play, its characters will have such knowledge as their 
chief end and desire, and in their intercourse will all be eagerly 
engaged in observing and learning through looks, words, and 



KING LEAR. 205 

other symbols, the intents and purposes, in short, the hearts and 
minds of each other. 

But it is the aim of Philosophy to know through causes (Nov. 
Org. Book II. Aph. 2) ; and this, when the subject is human 
nature, is this same knowledge of men's hearts and minds, for 
their intentions and purposes are the final causes of their conduct, 
and all investigation of motives and study of human nature is 
an inquiry into causes. " The minds of men," says Bacon, " are 
the shops where their actions are forged ; " and although he re- 
pudiates the search of final causes in the discovery of physical 
truth, he allows their use with respect to men's actions and the 
intercourse of life. " The final cause rather corrupts than ad- 
vances the sciences except such as have to do with human action " 
(Nov. Org. Book II. Aph. 2). To account for any event or pos- 
ture of human affairs is to assign the causes of it. This, with 
regard to ordinary and familiar occurrences, is done almost in- 
stinctively, but immediately anything unusual takes place, curios- 
ity is excited to know the why and the wherefore, and all such 
questions as u What 's the matter ? " " How came this ? " " What 
do you mean ? " and numerous similar ones are but the interro- 
gations prompted by the mind's desire to know the causes and 
reasons of what it can not readily explain. 

It may be observed that the cause of a thing and the reason of 
a thing, though often logically the same, are not always so, yet in 
popular language cause and reason are used as convertible terms 
and are so used in the play ; for instance, " Why is the king of 
France so suddenly gone back ? Know you the reason ? ' ! 

The knowledge thus gained by experience is that wisdom which 
enables its possessor to give counsel in the pursuit of ends, for it 
points to the means or causes by which the desired effect may be 
produced ; so that not only the investigation of motives but also 
the asking of advice is an inquiry into causes both moral and 
physical as the case may be. This wisdom, moreover, is con- 
densed into maxims, precepts, proverbs, and is embodied in the 
rules and orders of superiors when such are given in the pru- 
dent administration of business or for the conduct of life. Nor 
would there be difficulty in the acquisition of this knowledge, 
would men honestly disclose their minds; whereas they hide bo far 
as possible that self that lies so darkly within them and of which 
they know so much and yet so little ; so that fiction takes the 



206 KING LEAR. 

place of fact and false pretense of true motive, while authority, 
instead of being exercised for truth and justice, is made the in- 
strument of malice and revenge. " A knowledge of the world " 
is, therefore, indispensable to the correct understanding of what 
is going on around us, and in the intercourse of men, which is in 
a great measure made up of mutual exchange of intelligence, 
there is a constant interpretation of each other's motives. This 
feature of life will, of course, enter in some degree into every 
dramatic representation of human action, but a cursory review of 
some leading scenes of this epitome of the world will enable us to 
mark the masterly manner with which the incidents and dialogue 
are constructed to exemplify the natural curiosity to know current 
events and to inquire into their causes. The characters confess 
their intents and purposes or hide them under false pretenses 
(feigned causes) ; they interpret the actions of others and seek to 
penetrate their ends and motives ; they ask counsel, teach pre- 
cepts, and give orders with regard to some course to be pursued 
or means to be used towards certain ends (which last, however, 
is the application of causes to work effects) ; or they bring accu- 
sations, and to accuse (as the etymology indicates, ad causam 
provocare) is to call one to assign a cause for some act com- 
mitted, which, as it is found good or bad, may lead to praise or 
blame, reward or punishment. 

And as the chain of causes is but the law of nature (the back- 
ground of the piece), and as the current of events — which as " the 
news of the day " is of so much interest and so eagerly sought for 
— is dependent on such laws, passages having reference to public 
and general events, but not necessary to the action of the piece, 
and having no essential importance, except perhaps to the artistic 
perfection of the work, are introduced and may be considered as 
representative or symbolical of the flux of things in the world at 
large. 

The passages, therefore, that will be cited (a few only of the 
large number of the same kind that the play contains) will be 
those which refer to such matters as are mentioned above, namely, 
avowals of intents and purposes, false pretenses assigned as a 
cover for designs ; information including counsel and advice ; 
inquiries made into the reasons, grounds, or causes of conduct (of 
which there is a great variety of forms), or passages which refer 
incidentally to passing events or the news of the day. 






KING LEAR. 207 

Act I. Sc. 1. Lear declares his intents, and purposes : 

" Meantime we will express our darker purpose. 
. . . Know, that we have divided 
In three our kingdom and 't is our fast intent 
To shake all cares and business from our age," etc. 

Cordelia entreats Lear to make known to his court the true 
cause of his displeasure towards her. 

" I yet beseech your Majesty 
(If — for I want that glib and oily art 
To speak and purpose not ; since what / well intend 
I '11 do 't before I speak) that you make known 
It is no vicious blot, etc. 
But even for want of that, for which I am richer,'' etc. 

Act I. Sc. 2. Edmund questions the validity of considering 
illegitimate children base, and asks a reason : — 

" Wherefore should I 
Stand in the plague of custom, etc. 

Why bastard ? wherefore base ? " etc. 

Edmund advises his father to a certain course towards Edgar, 
and assigns a reason for Edgar's writing the letter : — 

" If it please you to suspend your indignation against my brother, till you 
can derive from him some testimony of his intent, you shall run a certain course ; 
where if you violently proceed against him, mistaking his purpose, it would 
.make a great gap in your own honor and shake in pieces the heart of his obe- 
dience. I dare pawn down my life for him, that he hath writ thus to feel my 
affection to your honor and to no other pretense of danger" 

Gloster finds in the " late eclipses " the cause of the discords 
in families and state. " Though the wisdom of nature can reason 
it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent 
effects:' 

Edmund pretends to seek of Edgar the cause of his father's 
displeasure. 

" Bethink yourself wherein you may have offended him," etc. 

Act I. Sc. 3. Goneril instructs her servants to treat her father 
with disrespect that he may be driven to ask the cause and thus 
give her an opportunity to break with hi in. 

" Gon. Put on what weary negligence you please 
You and your fellows ; / V have it come to question* 



208 KING LEAR. 

And let his knights have colder looks among you ; 
What grows of it, no matter ; advise your fellows so. 
/ ivould breed from hence occasions, and I shall, 
That I may speak," etc. 

[" So close is the intercourse between causes and effects," says 
Bacon, " that the explanation of them must in a certain way be 
united and conjoined." The last quotation exemplifies this obser- 
vation.] 

Act I. Sc. 4. Kent assigns as a cause for disguising himself 
his " good intent " to serve the master that he loves. 

Lear asks of the Knight the cause of the Steward's insolence, 
" Why came not the slave back to tell me ? " etc., and in reply the 
Knight hints at the cause in Goneril's disaffection. 

" My lord, I know not what the matter is, but . . . there 's a great abatement 
of kindness," etc. 

The Fool assigns a reason for offering Kent his coxcomb. 

" Fool. Sirrah, you were best take my coxcomb. 
Kent. Why, my boy ? 
Fool. Why ? For taking one's part that is out of favor " 

He also states his reasons for wishing that he had two cox- 
combs. 

" Fool. Would I had two coxcombs and two daughters ? 
Lear. Why, my boy ? 
Fool. If I gave them all my living, I 'd keep my coxcomb," etc. 

The Fool tells Lear that his making his daughters his mothers 
is the cause of his being so full of songs. 

" Then they for sudden joy did weep, 
And I for sorrow sung." 

He also mentions the different causes of his being whipped. 
Lear demands of Goneril the cause of her ungracious looks. 

" How now, daughter ? what makes that frontlet on ? " 

Goneril beseeches Lear " to understand he?' purposes aright," 
and assigns the riotous conduct of the knights as the cause of the 
course she takes. Lear breaks forth into a curse upon her, and 
Albany, who enters at the moment, exclaims, " Now, gods, whom 
we adore, whereof comes this?" to which Goneril rejoins: "Never 
afflict yourself to know the cause" and to reconcile Albany to the 
course she has taken, tells him, — 



KING LEAR. 209 

" / know his heart : 
What he hath uttered I have writ my sister," — 

and instructs the messenger : — 

" Inform her full of my particular fear, 
And thereto add such reasons of your own 
As may confirm it more." 

Act I. Sc. 5. This scene between Lear and the Fool is made 
up of inquiries into causes and reasons. 

"Fool. Canst thou tell why one's nose stands i' the middle of one's face ? 
Lear. No. 
Fool. Why, to keep his eyes of either side of one's nose," etc. 

(( Fool. Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell ? 
Lear. No. 
Fool. Nor I neither, but I can tell why a snail has a house" 

Fool. The reason ivhy the seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty 
reason, etc. . . . 
If thou hadst been my fool, uncle, I 'd have thee beaten for being old before 
thy time. 
Lear. How 's that ? 
Fool. Thou shouldst not have been old, till thou hadst been wise." 

Act II. Sc. 1. 
" Curan. I have been with your father and given him notice that the Duke 
of Cornwall and Regan his duchess will be here with him to night. 
Edmund. How comes that f 
Curan. Nay, I know not. You have heard of the news abroad " etc. 

Edmund inquires of Edgar whether he had given cause of 
offense, pretending to think that Cornwall had come on account 

of it. 

" Have you not spoken 'gainst the Duke of Cornwall ? 
He 's coming hither ; now i' the night, i' the haste, 
And Regan with him. Have you nothing said ? " etc. 

Regan, with great address, uses Gloster's indignation against 
Edgar as the means of winning him over to her party against her 
father by giving as a cause of his conduct his companionship with 
Lear and his knights. 

" Regan. What, did my father's godson seek your life 
He whom my father nam'd ? Your Edgar f 
Was he not companion with the riotous knights 
That tend upon my father f 

Edmund. Yes, madam, he was of that consort. 
Reg. No marvel then, though he were ill affected" etc. 
14 



210 KING LEAR. 

The scene ends by Kegan's explaining to Gloster the causes of 
their coming. 

" You know not why we came to visit you 
Thus out of season, 
Occasions, noble Gloster, of some prize 
Wherein we must have use of your advice" etc. 



Act II. Sc. 2. Cornwall's trial of the cause between Kent and 
Oswald, or his investigation of the grounds of their quarrel. 

Act II. Sc. 4. Lear is at a loss for a cause of Regan's leaving 
home. 

"Lear, 'T is strange that they should so depart from home 
And not send back my messenger. 
Gentleman. As I learn'd 

The night before, there was no purpose in them 
Of this remove." 

Finding his messenger in the stocks, Lear asks the cause of his 

disgrace. 

" Resolve me, with all modest haste, which ivay 
Thou might' st deserve or they impose, this usage 
Coming from me." 

Kent inquires the reason of the king's small retinue. 

" How chance the king comes with so small a number ? " 

Lear looks upon the alleged sickness of Cornwall and Regan as 
false pretense, a feigned cause for the neglect with which they 
treat him. 

" Lear. Deny to speak with me ? They are sick ? They are weary f 
They have traveVd all the night ? Mere fetches • 
The images of revolt send flying off." 

Admitting afterwards these reasons to be true, he is brought to 
a violent reaction of feeling by seeing Kent in the stocks, which 
is a conclusive proof of intentional disrespect. 

" Death on my state ! wherefore 
Should he sit here ? This act persuades me 
That this remotion of the Duke and her 
Is practice only." 

Regan enters with a salutation : " I am glad to see you," to 
which Lear replies : — 

" Regan, I think you are ; I know what reason 
I have to think so." 






KING LEAR. 211 

Regan tells Lear that if Goneril has restrained the riots of his 
followers, — 

" 'T is on such grounds and to such wholesome ends 
As clears her from all blame." 

Goneril enters and Lear exclaims : — 

" O heavens ! 
If you do love old men . . . 

Make it your cause ; send down and take my part ! 
O Regan, wilt thou take her by the hand ? ' ' 

And Goneril asks : — 

u Why not by the hand ? How have I offended ? " 

Regan gives reasons why she cannot entertain the hundred 
knights. 

" I look'd not for you yet, nor am provided 
For your fit welcome, " etc. 

" How, in one house, 
Should many people under two commands 
Hold amity." 

The whole scene is made up of reasons for keeping or dismiss- 
ing the knights, concluding with Regan's counsel to shut Lear 
out, for which course the ground is assigned that 

" He is attended with a desperate train 
And what they may incense him to, being 
Apt to have his ear abused, wisdom bids fear.'' 

The foregoing instances are only some of those contained in 
the first two acts, and are abundantly sufficient to show the strict 
method that rules the style of the piece. It is almost one con- 
tinuous string of inquiries into causes. The other three acts will 
show instances even more pointed than any here quoted. It will 
be observed, moreover, that among them are allusions to physical 
as well as to moral causes, as in Lear's asking, " What is the 
cause of thunder ? '" or in saying, " Let them anatomize Regan: 
see what breeds about her heart. Is there any cause in nature 
that makes these hard hearts?" These and other similar in- 
stances give the play — to use a favorite word of Bacon as well 
as of Shakespeare — a seasoning of Natural Philosophy. The 
exception that proves the rule is also admitted in the case of the 
miracle or event without a cause exemplified in Edgar's pious 
fraud to save his father from suicide. But the whole dialogue of 



212 KING LEAR. 









the play is a tissue wrought out of inquiries into causes, and the 
assignment of them and of their effects, expressed in an endless 
variety of forms, and typifying the mind's desire for knowledge 
and the use of experience in the intercourse of life. 

But will not this apply to any tolerably faithful imitation of 
human intercourse ? To some extent, perhaps, but not with any- 
thing like the particularity here found, for in King Lear it is 
the Human World or Man that is represented, and it is the 
Human World or Man that is studied, and therefore this most 
prominent feature of human intercourse is particularly marked, 
inasmuch as it is only by an inquiry into moral causes that a 
" knowledge of the world" is obtained ; and thus it will be seen 
that a strict analogy runs between the fundamental idea of the 
play and Bacon's view of the object of his philosophy, which (as 
mentioned before) he describes as " the building of the model of 
the world in the understanding," which is only a figurative way 
of saying that philosophy is a knowledge of causes or of the 
laws of Nature ; and this when applied to Man is called " a 
knowledge of the world." 

But besides this general analogy, or rather identity, between 
Philosophy and this incessant inquiry into causes, which with 
such marvelous skill is made to mould the phraseology of the 
piece, it falls out also that the subject-matters of the dialogue 
correspond with the main heads into which Bacon divides Phi- 
losophy, and' that many passages and parts of scenes, and even 
the mental constitution of the characters, exemplify dramatically 
certain doctrines taught by Bacon, some of which, moreover, are 
distinctive and peculiar to himself. 

In the De Augmentis} Book III. ch. i. Bacon says : " The 
object of philosophy is threefold, — God, Nature, and Man. . . . 
Philosophy may, therefore, be conveniently divided into three 
branches of knowledge, — knowledge of God, knowledge of Na- 
ture, and knowledge of Man or Humanity." 

Of the knowledge of God or Divine Philosophy he says : "For 
Natural Theology is also rightly called Divine Philosophy. It is 

4 

1 The Advancement was published 1605, which is, perhaps, a little anterior to 
the production of King Lear, and the De Augmentis was not published till 1623 ; yet 
as Bacon's views are more fully stated in the latter work, the extracts will be gener- 
ally made from it in the translation contained in the edition of Spedding, Ellis & 
Heath, Boston, 1863. 



KING LEAR. 213 

defined as that knowledge concerning God which may be obtained 
by the light of Nature and the contemplation of his creatures. 
. . . The bounds of this knowledge truly drawn are that it suffices 
to refute and convince Atheism and to give information as to 
the laiv of nature, but not to establish religion. And, therefore, 
there never was miracle wrought by God to convert an atheist, 
because the light of reason might have led him to confess a 
God, but miracles have been wrought to convert idolators and the 
superstitious, who acknowledged a deity, but erred in his wor- 
ship." Book IV. ch. ii. 

This receives a not inapt illustration in the miracle (for the 
superstitious Gloster believes it one), which when he leaps, as he 
supposes, from the cliff and is preserved by " the clearest gods, 
who make them honors of men's impossibilities," converts him 
from an impious despair that seeks rest in suicide to a religious 
resignation to the will of heaven. He says while standing, as he 
thinks, on the edge of the cliff : — 

" O you mighty gods ! 
This world I do renounce, and in your sights 
Shake patiently my great affliction off. 
If I could bear it longer and not fall 
To quarrel with your great opposeless ivills, 
My snuff said loathed part of nature should 
Burn itself outP 

Act IV. Sc. 6. 

This state of revolt is followed, after the leap, by the] following 
expression of humble and pious resignation : — 

" You ever-gentle gods, take my breath from me 
Let not my worser spirit tempt me again 
To die before you please. 
Edgar. Well pray you, father" 

Act IV. Sc. 6. 

Bacon proceeds : " Therefore that God exists, that he governs 
the ivorld, that he is supremely powerful, that he is wise and 
prescient, that he is good, that he is a rewarder, that he is an 
avenger, that he is an object of adoration, — all this may be 
demonstrated from his works alone." Book III. Aph. 2. 

The tragedy is so thoroughly and obviously pervaded with the 
notion of the retributive justice of the gods, and of their power 
and government of the world, that it would be superfluous to cite 



214 KING LEAR. 

passages. Lear's sublime appeals to them for justice are familiar 
to all readers. But that the natural law by which guilt is pun- 
ished by its own reaction is a proof of the existence of the gods 
and of their sleepless justice is distinctly asserted by Albany, 
upon his hearing of the death of Cornwall at the hands of his 
own servant, who is made indignant by his master's inhumanity. 

" This shows you are above 
Yon justicers, that these our nether crimes 
So speedily can venge." 

Another branch of Natural Theology treats of the " Nature 
of Angels and Spirits : " and of unclean and fallen spirits Bacon 
says : " The conversing with them or the employment of them is 
prohibited. But the contemplation and knowledge of their nature, 
power, and illusions, not only from passages of Scripture, but 
from reason or experience, is not the least part of spiritual wis- 
dom. So certainly says the apostle : ' We are not ignorant of 
his stratagems.' ' ' 

This subject of devils and unclean spirits is copiously intro- 
duced into the play in passages suggested by Harsnet's " Dec- 
larations of Egregious Popish Impostures." " Their nature, power, 
and illusions " are thus touched upon by " poor Tom : " — 

"Who gives any thing to poor Tom ? whom the foul fiend hath led through 
fire and through flame, through fiord and whirlpool, o'er bog and quagmire ; that 
hath laid knives under his pillow and halters in his pew ; set ratsbane by his por- 
ridge ; made him proud of heart. . . . Do poor Tom some charity, whom the 
foul fiend vexes." Act III. Sc. 4. 

" This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet • he begins at curfew and walks to the 
first cock. He gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the harelips 
Act III. Sc. 4. 

"Five fiends have been ui poor Tom at once ; of lust, as Obidicut ; Hobbi- 
didance, prince of dumbness ; Mahu, of stealing ; Modo, of murder ; and Flib- 
bertigibbet, of mopping and mowing, who since possesses chambermaids and 
waiting- women." Act IV. Sc. 1. 

Natural Philosophy Bacon divides into " The Inquisition of 
Causes and the Production of Effects ; Speculative and Opera- 
tive." He adds that he " is well aware how close is the inter- 
course between causes and effects, so that the explanation of them 
must, in a certain way, be united and conjoined." De Aug. Book 
II. ch. iii. 

Writing as a philosopher, however, and treating of these mat- 
ters in the abstract, he can consider these two branches separ- 



KING LEAR. 215 

ately, and thinks it best so to do, but the play-writer who paints 
life in the concrete has not this advantage ; he is obliged to 
exhibit the cause and effect in " close intercourse " or in conjunc- 
tion, as in the following, where Cordelia inquires of the physician 
what cause or " means " may be used to help her father. 

" What can manh wisdom do, 
In the restoring his bereaved sense f 
He, that helps him, take all my outward worth. 
Phy. There is means, madam. 
Our foster nurse of nature is repose, 
The which he lacks ; that, to provoke in him, 
Are many simples operative, whose power 
Will close the eye of anguish. 
Cor. All blest secrets, 

All you unpublished virtues of the earth, 
Spring with my tears, he aidant and remediate 
In the good man's distress ! Seek, seek for him ! 
Lest his ungovern'd rage dissolve the life 
That wants the means to lead it." 

To the same class will belong passages of precepts, maxims, 
orders, counsels, etc., all which prescribe means for producing 
effects. 

Notwithstanding the strict union of cause and effect, and the 
involution of one in the other, so frequently instanced in the 
piece, there yet seems to be somewhat more prominence given to 
the speculative or theoretical than to the operative branch of 
Philosophy. " The Speculative is divided into Physic and Meta- 
physic, whereof Physic inquires and handles Material and Effi- 
cient Causes, Metaphysic, the Formal and Final.'" 

Of Efficient, and particularly of Final causes, it has already 
been seen that every page of the play furnishes instances, inas- 
much as the intents and purposes of men are the final causes of 
their actions, and an inquiry into these makes up a large portion 
of the dialogue. An example, however, of material causes is 
drawn in by the head and shoulders, as it were, in the storm 
scene. After Lear rushes out into the tempest, Gloster has some 
words of compassion for him, and describes the heath whither lie 
had gone as utterly without shelter. 

" Alack ! the night comes on and the bleak winds 
Do sorely raffle ; for many miles about 

There 9 S scarce a bush." 



216 KING LEAR. 

Yet Kent afterwards, on finding Lear, says : — : 

" Alack ! bare-headed. 
Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel, 
Some friendship will it lend you 'gainst the tempest. 
Repose you there, while I to this hard house 
(More hard than is the stone whereof H is raised, 
Which even but now, demanding after you, 
Denied me to come in) return and force 
Their scanted courtesy." 

This house thus alluded to is certainly inconsistent with Glos- 
ter's description of the heath as entirely shelterless, and has 
nothing whatever to do with the action of the piece, or even with 
Kent's action, for he does not return to it (as he says he will), 
but it enables the poet for some reason of his own — by refer- 
ence to the materials of which it is built — to introduce an in- 
stance of a material cause. 

Nor is a reference to the formal cause omitted. The formal 
cause is that which makes a thing what it is. Everything is that 
which it is through form. 

Edmund sneering at his father's belief in astrology, and allud- 
ing to the supposed influence of the stars over one's nativity, says 
that his own qualities might, perhaps, be attributed to " The 
Dragon's tail and Ursa Major," the constellations that presided 
over his birth ; but adds : " Tut, I should have been what I am, 
had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bas- 
tardizing" It was his soul or " form," not the stars, that deter- 
mined his nature. 

In addition to these instances of causation, the poet has thought 
proper to introduce also the fundamental principle which con- 
strains the mind to attribute every new appearance to a cause. 

To Cordelia, who asserts that she has " nothing " to say for 
the sake of a share of the kingdom, Lear replies : — 
"Nothing can come of nothing ; speak again." 

Of this axiom (after quoting it from Lucretius, and also from 
Persius) a great metaphysician, Sir W. Hamilton, says : " These 
lines of Lucretius and Persius enounce a physical axiom of an- 
tiquity, which expressing in its purest form the conditions of 
human thought, expresses also implicitly the whole intellectual 
phenomenon of causality." 

Physic is divided by Bacon " into three doctrines. For nature 



KING LEAR. 217 

is either united and collected, or diffused and distributed. . . . 
The third doctrine (which handles nature diffused or distributed) 
exhibits all the varieties and lesser sums of things, . . . and is 
but as a gloss or paraphrase attending upon the text of natural 
history." And this third doctrine he again divides into "Physic 
concerning things Concrete or Creatures, and Physic concerning 
things Abstract or Natures." 

No one can read Lear without remarking the frequent men- 
tion of animals, birds, insects, and the numerous metaphors taken 
from the animal kingdom, which give the play a decided note of 
Natural History. 

Concrete Physic is conversant either with the heavens, or 
meteors, or the elements, or the species, etc. 

The storm scene will pass for an instance of the topic of me- 
teors or elements, while of kinds or species there are various 
passages that may be taken as illustrative, as for instance poor 
Tom's enumeration of different kinds of dogs in answer to Lear's 
expostulation. 

" The little dogs and all, 

Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, see they bark at me. 

Edg. Tom will throw his head at them : avannt, you curs. 

Be thy mouth or black or white, 

Tooth that poisons if it bite, 

Mastiff, grey-hound, mongrel grim, 

Hound or spaniel, brach or lym, 

Or bob-tail tyke, or trundle-tail, 

Tom will make him weep and wail," etc. 

Abstract Physic, or Natures, when applied to Man, would 
refer to his disposition, qualities, natures, all which are strongly 
marked, as in " the fiery disposition " of Cornwall, " the milky 
gentleness " of Albany, the "choleric" Lear, the "tardiness of 
nature " of Cordelia, or the following from Edgar's sketch of the 
"serving-man," "False of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand" 
and other similar passages which may be classified under the 
head of Abstract Physic or Natures. 

"Among these parts of Physic," says Bacon, "that which 
enquires concerning the heavenly bodies is altogether imperfect 
and deficient. ... As for Astrology, it is so full of superstition 
that scarce anything sound can be discovered in it." De Aug. 
Book III. ch. iv. 

"The doctrine of nativities, election, inquiries, and the like 



218 KING LEAR. 

frivolities have in my judgment for the most part nothing sure 
solid." 

This topic is introduced by Gloster, a believer, and is ridi- 
culed by Edmund, a skeptic. 

" Gloster. These late eclipses of the sun and moon portend no good to us. 
. . . Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide. . . . This villain of mine 
comes under the prediction ; there 's son against the father ; the king falls 
from bias of nature ; there 's father against the child. We have seen the best 
of our time," etc. 

Coming to that " knowledge whereunto the ancient oracle 
directs us, which is the knowledge of ourselves," he treats of " the 
doctrine concerning Man," which he divides into " The Philo- 
sophy of Humanity and Civil Philosophy." 

" Philosophy of Humanity consists of parts similar to those of 
which man consists, that is, of knowledges which respect the body 
and knowledges which respect the mind." 

Of these latter he thus discourses, De Aug. Book V. ch. i. : — 

" The doctrine concerning the Intellect and the doctrine con- 
cerning the Will of Man, are, as it were, twins by birth. For 
purity of illumination and freedom of will began and fell together ; 
and nowhere in the universal nature of things is there so intimate 
a sympathy as between truth and goodness." 

" The knowledge which respects the use and objects of the 
faculties of the human soul has two parts, namely, Logic and 

Ethic Logic discourses of the understanding and reason ; 

Ethic of the will, appetite, and affections ; the one produces deter- 
minations, the other actions. It is true, indeed, that the imagi- 
nation performs the office of an agent or messenger or proctor in 
both provinces, both the judicial and ministerial. For sense 
sends all kinds of images over to imagination for reason to 
judge of; and reason again when it has made its judgment and 
selection, sends them over to imag ination, before the decreed put 
in execution. For voluntary motion is ever preceded and incited 
by imagination, so that imagination is as a common instrument 
to both, — both reason and will. Neither is the imagination simply 
and only a messenger, but it is either invested with or usurps 
no small authority in itself besides the simple duty of the mes- 
sage. For it was well said by Aristotle " that the mind has over 
the body that commandment which the lord has over a bondman ; 
but that reason has over the imagination that commandment 



KING LEAR. 219 

which a magistrate has over a free citizen " who may come also 
to will in his turn." De Aug. Book V. ch. i. 

According to this psychology, a healthy and concurrent action 
of the sense, the imagination, and the reason must take place, 
whether the object be to arrive at the true or to choose the 
good. For if the sense either fails us or deceives us or if the 
imagination in any way misrepresents the notices of the sense, 
the reason must necessarily be led into error. 

And first, with regard to the senses, they generally are true to 
their functions, as inlets of intelligence, the two principal ones 
being the eye and ear (Adv. 93), but throughout the play the use 
of all the senses for the acquisition of knowledge is strenu- 
ously insisted upon. 

" Canst thou tell," asks the Fool, " why a man's nose stands in 
the middle of his face ? Why, to keep one's eyes either side of 
one's nose, that what a man cannot smell out, he may spy into" 

To see is to know, and to look into, to seek, to find, and many 
other words denoting the action of the eye are but different 
modes of expression for mental perception. And so far is this 
carried that the use of the other senses is spoken of as a mode of 
sight. Thus blind Gloster says : — 

" Oh, dear Edgar, 
Could I but live to see thee in my touch 
I 'd say / had eyes again." 

So too mad Lear, — " A man may see how this world goes ivitli no 
eyes ; look with thine ears." 

" All interpretation of nature commences with the senses and 
leads from the perceptions of the senses by a straight, regular, 
and guarded part to the perceptions of the understanding" (Nov. 
Org. Book II. Aph. 38). Bacon therefore proposes aids to the 
senses, which may strengthen, enlarge, and rectify their immedi- 
ate action, — such as glasses and instruments. Among others he 
mentions spectacles, which we also find in the play. " Come," 
says Gloster to Edmund, "if it (the letter) be nothing, I shall 
not need spectacles" 

This though trivial in itself may be taken with other corre- 
spondences. And again he says, in the De Aug mentis (Book \ . 
ch. ii.) : "The senses, though they may deceive us or fail us, may 
nevertheless with diligent assistance suffice for knowledge, and 
that by the help not so much of instruments as of those e.rpen- 



220 KING LEAE. 



the 



mentis which produce and urge things which are too subtle for 
sense to some effect comprehensible by the sense." 

" For example, it is obvious that air and spirit and like bodies, 
which in their entire substance are rare and subtle, can neither be 
seen nor touched. Therefore in the investigation of bodies of 
this kind, it is altogether necessary to resort to reduction.'' 
Nov. Org. Book II. Aph. 40. 

Thus Lear, unable to determine whether Cordelia breathes or 

not, cries — 

"Lend me a looking-glass ; 
If that her breath will mist or stain the stone, 
Why then she lives, — " 

and again, having placed a feather upon her lips, he exclaims: — 

" This feather stirs : she lives ! if it be so," etc. 

Another instance of the same kind is the experiment to which 
Lear resorts, when first restored to consciousness, to prove his 
own identity. 

u I will not swear these are my hands : let 's see : 

I feel this pin prick. Would I were assur'd 
Of my condition." 

These are slight instances, no doubt : but they are natural and 
proper to dramatic action : they, moreover, elucidate Bacon's 
principles as well as more important ones would do. 

But it is not so much from the defects or fallacies of the senses 
that the reason is led into error as from the irregular action of 
the imagination, which, stimulated by the desires, is ever ready to 
abandon its duty as ; ' simple messenger " between the sense and 
reason and to ;; usurp authority " over the judgment. Common 
cases of this kind are found in all false and worldly estimates. 
The play is full of instances. But a want of concurrent action 
between the senses and imagination will lead to the grossest delu- 
sion, while at times the imagination acquires power to annul the 
very functions of both the senses and reason, thus leading to 
downright insanity. These errors are exemplified in the cases of 
Gloster and Lear. Of course, reference is here made to Gloster's 
loss of his eyes and to Lear's loss of his reason. 

In Gloster's case, the loss of sight lays him open to the pious 
stratagem practiced upon him by Edgar, who, aware that his father 
is meditating suicide by throwing himself from a cliff, and 



I 



KING LEAR. 221 

acquainted, also, with his superstitious turn of mind, hopes to 
reconcile him to life by convincing him that the gods miraculously 
prevent his self-destruction. He therefore pretends, while lead- 
ing his father on level ground, that they have mounted a hill and 
reached its top, and by a description of an imaginary view from 
the edge of a precipice, especially calculated to put the scene be- 
fore the mind's eye, he persuades his father that they were 
standing even then within a foot of the verge of the cliff. Some 
critics have thought that the poet was attempting the sublime in 
this description (and it will pass very well in its way for good 
word-painting), but it is quite clear that he was not astride of his 
Pegasus for the purpose of testing his powers of flight, but had 
the faithful steed harnessed as usual to the car of his philosophy. 
Edgar purposely breaks up the view into pieces, divides and sub- 
divides the altitude, and refers to the effects produced by distance 
upon the senses — upon the sight in the apparent diminution of 
objects and upon the hearing in the attenuation of sound — in 
order to supply familiar standards that will enable his blind 
father to depicture the scene forcibly upon his imagination. 

The same method is adopted by Edgar when he supposes him- 
self at the bottom of the cliff and looking upward. 

" Ten masts at each make not the altitude 
Which thou hast perpendicularly fell" etc. 

The delusion of Gloster is, of course due to the action of his 
imagination, uncorrected by the senses. His mind's eye sees 
only the false pictures that Edgar's words portray ; but its ac- 
tion, though erroneous, is healthy. 

In the case of Lear on the other hand which immediately fol- 
lows in the same scene, the hallucination arises from the imagina- 
tion usurping the office both of sense and reason. His eyes are 
wide open, but the images they receive are not conveyed to the 
understanding; the imagination, instead of acting as a faithful 
messenger, substitutes for the notices of the sense its own phan- 
toms, and these are so vivid that the judgment overpowered as in 
a dream, passively receives them as as if they had a corresponding 
reality. Lear says : — 

"There's your press-money. That fellow handles his bow like a crow- 
keeper : draw me a clothier's yard. Look, look, a mouse ! Peace, peace ; — 
this piece of toasted cheese will do 't. There 's my gauntlet : 1 '11 prove it on 



222 KING LEAR. 

a giant. Bring up the brown bills. Oh, well flown bird ! — i' the clout, i' 
the clout : hewgh ! Give the word," etc. 

In treating of that branch of logic which Bacon terms the 
" Art of Judging," he makes his celebrated division of fallacies 
into sophistical fallacies, fallacies of interpretation, and false ap- 
pearances or idols, In the Advancement, which gives perhaps 
the earliest form of this doctrine, he styles these last simply 
'[fallacies or false appearances" but in the translation De 
Augmentis he terms them " false appearances or idols" and di- 
vides them into the Idols of the Tribe, of the Cave, and of the 
Market Place. There is also a fourth class, the Idols of the The- 
atre, but with these we are not concerned at present. It should 
be observed, however, that by idols he does not intend objects 
of false worship, before which the mind bows down, as many 
have supposed, but rather uses the word in its original Greek sense 
of images, phantoms, illusions, or what he calls in Valerius 
Terminus " the inherent and profound errors and superstitions 
in the nature of the mind." The term idol is an antithesis to 
an idea or true form of a thing. They are the prejudices that 
destroy the balance of the mind and give it a bias to one side 
or the other. "They are inseparable," says Bacon, "from our 
nature and condition of life" 

The Idols of the Tribe have their foundation in human nature 
and in the tribe and race of men. 

" As an example," (De Aug. Book V. ch. iv.) " of the Idols of 
the Tribe, take this. The nature of the human mind is more 
affected by affirmatives and actives than by negatives and pas- 
sives, — whereas by right, it should be indifferently disposed to- 
wards both. But now a few times hitting or presence produces 
a much stronger impression on the mind than many times failing 
or absence; a thing which is the root of all vain superstition and 
credulity, ... as astrology, dreams, omens, and the like." 

This class of errors and superstitions is exemplified by Gloster's 
credulity and belief in astrology, — a belief in which he is con- 
firmed by the events of the day, — dissensions and troubles in 
family and State having chanced to follow certain eclipses. 

" These late eclipses in the sun and moon," he says, " portend 
no good to us : though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus 
and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects. 






KING LEAR. 223 

In cities, mutinies ; in countries, discord ; in palaces, treason, and 
the bond crack'd 'twixt father and son," etc. 

Edmund covertly satirizes this credulity. " I am thinking, 
brother, of a prediction I read this other day, ichat should follow 
these eclipses f " 

" I promise you the effects he writes of, succeed unhappily" 
etc., — the old fallacy, post hoc, ergo propter hoc. 

" The Idols of the Cave arise from each man's peculiar nature 
both of mind and body and also from education and custom and 
the accidents which befall particular men. For it is a most 
beautiful emblem, that of Plato's cave : for (not to enter into the 
exquisite subtlety of the allegory) if a child were kept in a dark 
grot or cave under the earth until maturity of age and then came 
suddenly abroad and beheld this array of the heavens and of 
nature, no doubt many strange and absurd imaginations would 
arise in his mind. Now we, although our persons live in view of 
heaven, yet our spirits are included in the caves of our oiun 
bodies, so that they must needs be filled ivith infinite errors and 
false appearances, if they come forth but seldom and for brief 
periods from their cave and do not continually live in the con- 
templation of nature, as in the open air." De Aug. Book V. 
ch. iv. 

Of these idols there are a great number and variety. Among 
other errors which spring from this source are the prejudices that 
grow out of habits, associations, and conditions in life — educa- 
tion, in short', taken in its widest sense. It has been said that 
every man is, by force of custom, imprisoned in a cage of glass so 
thin as to be invisible, but which gives a peculiar form and color 
to all objects of his perception ; and to this effect may be likened 
those mental distortions and " false appearances," produced by 
habit and education, and termed " idols of the cave," of which 
Lear, whose nature is bent and distorted by custom and condition 
in life, is a powerful portrayal. His whole course of life has 
rendered the action of his mind a constant example of this error. 
Long years of pride and power have engendered in him habits of 
thought so inveterate that at times he is absolutely incapable of 
perceiving the truth. And this is all the* more striking in him, 
as being a king and a dispenser of rewards and punishments, it 
especially behooves him to preserve the exact balance of his 
judgment. But there can be few stronger examples of the force 



224 KING LEAR. 

of custom to shut up the mind in a cave, as it were, and prevent 
its perception of things in the clear light of truth than the sen- 
tences he passes upon Cordelia and Kent ; they are marked by 
almost judicial blindness. And in pronouncing banishment on 
Kent, whom he deems guilty of treason for remonstrating against 
his arbitrary course towards Cordelia, he unconsciously betrays 
his unfitness as a judge by admitting that " neither his nature nor 
his place can bear " the slightest opposition to his will. 

" Lear. Hear me, recreant ! 
On thine allegiance, hear me ! — 
Since thou hast sought to make us break our vow 
Which we durst never yet, and with strain* d pride 
To come betwixt our sentence and our power • 
Which nor our nature nor our place can bear ; 
Our potency made good, take thy reward," etc. 

This class of minds exemplifies, as Bacon points out, the saying 
of Herclitus, "that men seek truth in their own little worlds 
and not in the greater world" 

" The Idols of the Market Place," says Bacon, u are most trou- 
blesome which have crept into the understanding through the 
tacit agreement of men, concerning the imposition of words and 
names. Now words are generally framed and applied according 
to the conception of the vulgar and draw lines of separation 
according to such differences as the vulgar can follow." De 
Aug. Book V. ch. iv. 

The most intricate and deeply rooted of these idols are the 
words " which spring out of a faulty and unskillful abstraction." 
Nov. Org. Book I. Aph. 60. 

An instance of this class directly in point occurs in the solilo- 
quy of Edmund, in which he speculates upon the propriety of the 
world's calling him " base " on account of his illegitimate birth, 
and gives his reason why such a term should be considered in 
such a case a most " faulty and unskilful abstraction." 

" Why bastard ? wherefore base ? 
When my dimensions are as well compact, 
My mind as generous, and my shape as true 
As honest madam's issue ? Why brand they us 
With base ? with baseness ? bastardy ? base, base f 
Who in the lusty stealth of nature, take 
More composition," etc. 

. . . Fine word — legitimate" 

Act I. Sc. 2. 



KING LEAR. 225 

The passage is not quotable at length, but those who recall it 
will perceive that it fully sustains the claim here made of its 
being a perfectly apposite illustration (from Edmund's point of 
view) of an error arising from a faulty abstraction. 

Before dividing Philosophy into three branches of knowledge, 
viz., of God, of Nature, and of Man, Bacon constitutes " one uni- 
versal science to be as the mother of the rest." This science he 
distinguishes " by the name of Philosophia prima, primitive or 
summary philosophy ; or Sapience, which was formerly defined 
as the knowledge of things divine and human ; . . . my meaning 
is simply this, that a science be constituted which may be a recep- 
tacle for all such axioms as are not peculiar to any of the particu- 
lar sciences, but belong to several of them in common." De Aug. 
Book III. ch. i. 

Among such axioms he mentions, " All things are changed and 
nothing lost." This is a rule in Physics exhibited thus: u The 
Quantum of Nature is neither diminished nor increased." The 
same holds in Natural Theology, with this variation : "It is the 
work of Omnipotence to make somewhat nothing and to make 
nothing somewhat." 

This axiom was frequently quoted by Bacon, as for instance 
in Novum Organum, Book II. Aph. 40 : " There is nothing more 
true in Nature, than that nothing is produced from nothing ." 

It appears in the play in Lear's speech to Cordelia, already 
cited, "Nothing can come of nothing," and it also appears a 
second time in a colloquy between Lear and the Fool. 

" Fool. Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle ? 
Lear. Why, no, boy ; nothing can be made out of nothing. 
Fool. Pr'ythee, tell him, so much the rent of his land comes to." 

Act I. Sc. 4. 

Another of these common axioms is " The force of an agent 
is increased by the reaction of a contrary" which is a rule in 
Physics. " The same has wonderful efficacy in Politics, since 
every faction is violently irritated by the encroachment of a con 
trary faction." 

This doctrine of " antiperistasis," or of action and reaction, is 

conspicuous in the piece. It appears in the alternations of passion 

in Lear, but the " increase of intensity of one of two contraries 

by the juxtaposition of the other," as of one faction by the eu- 

15 



226 KING LEAK. 

croachment of the contrary, has an apposite illustration in the 
scene where Goneril and Regan resolve to cut down Lear's train 
of knights, which he, on the other hand, is intensely anxious to 
retain. Just in proportion as he grows urgent and passionate, 
does the stony immobility of his daughters deepen and harden, 
and on the contrary, as they cut down the number of knights from 
one hundred to fifty, from fifty to twenty-five, from twenty-five to 
one, from one to none, do his entreaties grow more piteous, his 
anguish more intense, until, with a heart bursting with grief and 
rage, he hurries out into the storm. 

There is another part of Primitive Philosophy, of which, Bacon 
says, " if you look to the terms, is ancient ; if to the thing I mean, 
is new." It is an inquiry with regard to the Adventitious Con- 
ditions (or Adjuncts, as they are styled in The Advancement) of 
Essences or things, as greater, less, much, little, before, after, 
identity, diversity, habit, privation, and the like. These are 
common to all classes of subjects, and are evidently derivations 
from the predicaments of Aristotle, but the peculiarity they 
possess as a part of the Primitive Philosophy of Bacon is that he 
considers them as they exist in nature, and not merely in logic 
and notion. " For example," he says, " no one who has treated 
of much and little has endeavored to assign a reason why some 
things in nature are and can be so numerous and plentiful, others 
so few and scanty ; for it certainly cannot be that in the nature of 
things there should be as much gold as iron ; that roses should be 
as abundant as grass," etc. De Aug. Book III. ch. i. 

Now these external or adventitious conditions or adjuncts of 
things, when inquired of with respect to man, must refer to the 
varieties and differences of their conditions and fortunes ; and the 
consideration of the more and less, the great and small, the better 
and worse, when applied to human life, is but an inquiry why 
there are so many poor, so few rich ; so many wretched, so few 
happy ; so many foolish, so few wise ; and these inequalities and 
the remedies for them form a conspicuous feature of the play. In 
fact, the miseries and privations of man are most impressively 
typified in the Bedlam beggar, " poor Tom." Gloster says to 
him : — 

"Here, take this purse, thou whom the heaven' *s plagues 
Have humbled to all strokes ; that I am wretched 
Makes thee the happier : — Heavens deal so still ! 



KING LEAR. 227 

Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man 
That slaves your ordinance, that will not see 
Because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly ; 
So distribution should undo excess, 
And each man have enough." 

Identity and Diversity are among these Adjuncts or Condi- 
tions of Things ; yet when applied to human beings, so great and 
often so groundless do the different conditions seem to be that 
Kent, in the case of Lear's daughters, is driven to find the cause 
of them in planetary influence. 

" It is the stars, 
The stars above us, govern our conditions • 
Else one self-mate and mate could not beget 
Such different issues." 

And here may be introduced a notice of a striking resemblance 
between a letter of Bacon's to Bishop Andrews and a passage in 
Lear, viz., the soliloquy of Edgar (Act III. Sc. 6). The letter 
was prefixed to "The Advertisement touching a Holy War," and 
was written in 1622 after his fall. 

The letter runs thus : — 

My Lord, — Amongst consolations, it is not the least to 
represent to a man's self like examples of calamity in others. 
For examples give a quicker impression than arguments: and, 
besides, they certify us that which the Scripture also tendereth 
for satisfaction, that no new thing has happened to us. This they 
do the better, by how much the examples are like in circum- 
stances to our own case ; and more especially if they fall upon 
persons that are greater and worthier than ourselves. For as it 
savoureth of vanity to match ourselves highly in our' own conceit, 
so, on the other side, it is a good sound conclusion that if our 
betters have sustained the like events, we have the less cause to 
be grieved. 

If we arrange the parallel passages from the letter in the order 
in which they are versified in the play, they will stand thus : — 

"If our betters have sustained the like events, we have the less cause to In 



" When we our betters see bearing our /roes. 
We scarcely think our miseries ourj'ocs." 

"Amongst consolations, it is not the least to represent to a man's self like 
examples of calamity in others." 



228 KING LEAR. 

" Who alone suffers, suffers most in the mind, 
Leaving free things and happy shores behind. 
But then the mind much sufferance doth o'erskip 
When grief hath mates and bearing fellowship ! " 

"And more especially if they fall upon persons that are greater and worthier 
than ourselves." 

" How light and portable my pain seems now 

When that which makes me bend, makes the king bow.'" 

" This they do the better, by how much the examples are liker in circum- 
stances to our own." 

" He childed as I fathered." 

As it is impossible that the passage in the play could have 
been suggested by the letter, — the play having been published in 
1608, — there are three conjectures to account for the coincidence. 
1. That such coincidence is purely accidental. 2. That Bacon 
had seen or read the play, and that this comparatively unimport- 
ant soliloquy of Edgar had remained in his memory, and that he 
afterwards used it in writing his letter ; or 3d — which is the 
only other supposition possible — that Bacon wrote both the letter 
and the passage. 

Another resemblance is perhaps worth observing between a 
passage in " The Advertisement touching a Holy War," and one 
in the play. 

The first is as follows : " And much like were the case if you 
suppose a nation where the custom were that after full age the 
sons should expulse their fathers and mothers out of their pos- 
sessions and put them to their pension . . . being a total violation 
and perversion of the law of nature and of nations." Bacon's 
Works, Vol. XIII. p. 218. 

The same opinion is attributed by Edmund to Edgar : " I have 
often heard him maintain it to be fit that sons at perfect age and 
fathers declined, the father should he as a ward to the son, and 
the son manage the revenue" — upon hearing which proposed 
"violation of the law of nature" Gloster exclaims, "O villain, 
villain! Abhorred villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish vil- 
lain ! Worse than brutish ! Abominable villain ! " 

The passages of the play which are parallels of Bacon's tenets 
of Civil Philosophy have reference to that of which so much has 
already been said ; that is, the knowledge of men. One branch of 
Civil Philosophy is the doctrine of negotiation, a part of which, 



KING LEAR. 229 

says Bacon, "I report as deficient; not but that it is used and 
practiced even more than is fit, but it has not been handled in 
books." This is " Wisdom for One's Self," or " The Knowledge 
of Advancement in Life " (including the Arts of Policy), of 
which doctrine Edmund is for a time a very successful practicer. 
The main and summary precepts of this doctrine relate to the 
just knowledge of ourselves and of others. " Men may be known," 
says Bacon, " in six ways, — by their countenances and expres- 
sions, their words, their actions, their dispositions, their ends, and 
lastly by the reports of others." 

All the personages of the piece study each other in these re- 
spects, and endeavor also to obtain " information of particulars 
touching persons and actions " from the reports of others. For 
an instance of this, the scene (Act IV. Sc. 5) may be taken, 
where Regan attempts to learn from the Steward the contents of 
the letter he is bearing to Edmund, and the reasons of Goneril 
for writing it : — 

" Reg. But are my brother's powers set forth ? 

Stew. Ay, madam. 

Reg. Himself in person there ? 

Stew. Madam, with much ado ; 

Your sister is the better soldier. 

Reg. " Lord Edmund spake not with your lady at home ? 

Steiv. No, madam. 

Reg. Faith, he is posted hence on serious matter. 

Stew. I must needs after him, madam, with my letter. 

My lady charg'd my duty in this business. 

Reg. Why should she write to Edmund ? Might not you 

Transport her purposes by word ? Belike, 

Something — I know not what — I '11 love thee much. 

Let me unseal the letter. 

Stew. Madam, I had rather — 

Reg. I know your lady does not love her husband ; 

I am sure of that ; and at her late being here, 

She gave strange oeillads and most speaking looks 

To noble Edmund. I know you are of her bosom. 

Stew. I, madam ? 

Reg. I speak in understanding ; you are • I know it" etc. 

But to judge of character or disposition by the face and actions 
is the business of Physiognomy, which art Bacon makes one 
branch of what he terms " the league between the Soul and 
Body," discovering the dispositions of the soul by the lineaments 
of the body. 



230 KING LEAK. 

This art is copiously illustrated, as it is one mode of knowing 
men, and it particularly exemplifies the leading idea on which the 
play is founded, namely, that the external world is one of appear- 
ance, and that all its images and phenomena are but signs and 
symbols through which the inward essence and hidden qualities of 
things are expressed. Of these symbols, the most significant and 
best worth deciphering are the expressions of the body and coun- 
tenance, such as glances, tears, smiles, blushes, frowns, gestures, 
the gait, — in short, all bodily action and posture as indicative 
of the thoughts and emotions of the mind. And the method of 
Lear, in the delineation of passion, is to place before us the 
physical effects of passion, and to depict the bodily movements or 
states that are caused by the ebb and flow of feeling. 

Some instances may be cited, as of the pining away of the Fool 
after the banishment of Cordelia : — 

" Since my young lady 's going into France, the Fool hath much pin'd away." 
Lear. No more of that ! I have noted it well" 

The vulgar insolence of the Steward, who has been instructed 
by Goneril to treat her father with disrespect, and "to let his 
knights have colder looks" is thus expressed: — 

" Lear. Do you bandy looks with me, you rascal ? [Stri&ing him.'] 

Goneril's sullenness is set before us in her father's and the 
Fool's description of her face : — 

" Lear. How now, daughter ? what makes that frontlet on ? " 
Methinks you are too much of late in the frown ! " 

Fool. Thou wast a pretty fellow when thou hadst no need to care for her 
frowning. Yes, forsooth. \To Goneril.] I will hold my tongue, so your 
face bids me, though you say nothing." 

The fright of the Steward is thus painted by Kent : — 

" A plague upon your epileptic visage ! 
Smile you my speeches as I were a fool ? 
Goose, if I had you upon Sarum plain 
I 'd drive you cackling home to Camelot." 

The outraged humanity of Cornwall's servant, who resists his 
master's attempt to put out Gloster's eyes, is marked in the bold 
and erect attitude his aroused manhood causes him to take : — 

" Serv. Nay, then, come on, and take the chance of anger. 
Reg. [To another serv.] Give me thy sword. A peasant stand up thus ! n 



KING LEAR. 231 

Lear says of Regan : — 

" And here 's another whose warpt looks proclaim 
What store her heart is made of, " 

The grief of the old king is rendered more touching by his 
struggle to repress any unmanly exhibition of it : — 

" Life and Death ! I am asham'd 
That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus — 
That these hot tears, which break from me perforce, 
Should make you worth them." 

And again : — 

" O let not woman's weapons, water drops, 
Stain my man's cheeks. 

You think 1 '11 weep f 
No, I '11 not weep ; I have full cause of weeping, 
But this heart shall break into a thousand flaws 
Or ere 1 '11 weep. 

Edgar's knightly bearing is thus described : — 

" Your very gait did prophesy a nobleness'' 

Observe also the direct use made of symbols, — and under the 
head of symbols may be taken tokens, emblems, passwords, in 
short, anything having a representative character, as Lear gives 
his crown as a symbol of power, and the Fool gives his cap as a 
symbol of folly. 

So Kent gives his ring to " the gentleman " to be shown to 
Cordelia as a token of fidelity : — 

" If you shall see Cordelia 
(As fear not but you shall), show her this ring ; 
And she will tell you who this fellow is 
That yet you do not know." 

Goneril says to Edmund, giving him a favor : — 

" Wear this. Spare speech. 
Decline your head. This kiss, if it could speak, 
Would stretch your spirits up into the air," etc. 

Albany accuses Edmund of treason and throws down his 
glove : — 

" There \s my pledge. I'll prove it on thy heart, etc. 
Edmund. There 's my exchange." 

Edmund, in order to countermand his writ on the life <>f Lear, 
sends his sword as a token of reprieve. 



232 KING LEAR. 

" Edgar. Send thy token of reprieve. 
Edm. Well thought on. Take my sword. 
Give it the captain." 

Other instances of a like nature are the following : — 

" Lear. Here 's earnest of thy service." [Giving Kent money. ~\ 

" Lear. Give the word. 
Edgar. Sweet marjoram [i. e. king-wwi]. 
Lear. Pass." 

And again Lear says : — 

" There 's my gauntlet. I '11 prove it on a giant." 

" Ingratitude, more hideous than the sea monster." 

This is said to allude to the hippopotamus, the hieroglyphical 
symbol of ingratitude. 

Of a like nature is the expression " sharper than a serpent's 
tooth," which the commentators say refers to the viper, an em- 
blem of ingratitude. 

Kent, asked by Cornwall why he is angry with the Steward, 
gives as a reason, — # 

" That such a slave as this should wear a sword 
That wears no honesty" — 

where a sword is referred to as a badge of honor and gentility. 

"I will be," says Lear, " the pattern of all patience." 

Frequent mention is made of garments as symbolizing condi- 
tion in life. Thus Cordelia says to Kent, disguised as a menial : 

" Be better suited. 
These weeds are memories of those worser hours ; 
I pr'ythee put them off." 

A trumpet gives sign of the coming of a particular person : — 

" What trumpet 's that ? 
Beg. 1 know H. My sister's." 

Goneril, sneering at Albany's pacific disposition, says : — 

" Where 's thy drum ? 
France spreads his banners in thy noiseless land." 

And again she says : — 

" I must change arms at home, and give the distaff 
Into my husband's hands." 



KING LEAK. 233 

Gloster determines to send Edgar's picture through the land, 
thus putting him, as it were, into the " rogues' gallery : " — 

" Hark, the duke's trumpets ! I know not why he comes. 
All ports I '11 bar . . . besides, his picture 
I will send far and near, that all the kingdom 
May have due note of him." 

Observe also in the dialogue the use of symbols themselves, as 
letters of the alphabet and other marks of notation, as when the 
Fool calls Lear " an O without a figure," or when Kent calls the 
Steward " a zed, an unnecessary letter" 

So, too, Edmund hums, u fa, sol, la, mi" 

On this, Dr. Burney says : " Shakespeare shows by the context 
that he was well acquainted with the property of these syllables 
in solmization, which imply a series of sounds so unnatural that 
ancient musicians prohibited their use. The monkish writers on 
music say, mi contra fa est diabolus ; the interval fa mi includ- 
ing a tritonus or sharp fourth, consisting of three tones without 
the intervention of a semitone expressed in the modern scale by 
the letters F G A B, would form a musical phrase extremely dis- 
agreeable to the ear." 

It may be worth observing that Bacon refers to the same natu- 
ral law : — 

" In the ordinary rises and falls of the voice of man, there fall 
out to be two half notes between the unison and diapason, and 
this varying is natural. For if a man would endeavour to raise 
or fall his voice still by half-notes, like the stop of a lute, or by 
whole notes alone without halves as far as an eighth, he will not 
be able to frame his voice unto it, which showeth that after every 
three whole notes nature requireth, for all harmonical purposes, 
one half note to be interposed" Nat. Hist. Cent. II. 105. 

Names of animals are used as symbols of moral qualities, as in 
this of Edgar : " hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, 
dog in madness, lion in prey." 

Affined with symbols are descriptions of types of classes, such 
as Edgar's description of " the serving man ; " Kent's, of " the 
smiling rogues; " Cornwall's, of the "blunt man;" Edgar's, of 
the " Tom o' Bedlam " ; and of the like nature are names which 
stand for moral qualities, as Ajax for heroism, Tom o* Bedlam for 
poverty, the Turk for licentiousness, the Scythian for barbarism, 
Nero for wickedness, etc. 



234 KING LEAK. 

Most names and words are general terms, applicable to many 
things, but each man has his own proper name by which he is 
known. Proper names are especially symbolical, as they desig- 
nate individuals. Aristotle says that " words are the symbols in 
the voice of the affections of the soul," and therefore have direct 
reference to truth and knowledge. They are so regarded in the 
play, and many examples of them as symbols occur. The first 
use that man in paradise made of his knowledge was to give 
names to every living creature according to his properties (Ad- 
vancement, p. 92), and so it has been ever since ; we all give 
names to things, and especially to men, according to our know- 
ledge of their natures and qualities ; as Lear, after one of the 
Fool's gibes, asks, "Dost thou call me fool, boy?" and the Fool 
replies, " All thy oilier titles thou hast given away ; that thou wast 
born with." 

Lear, amazed at Goneril's filial ingratitude, affects not to know 
her, and ironically asks, — 

" Your name, fair gentlewoman ? " 

Albany, referring to Goneril's wickedness, addresses her : — 

" Thou worse than any name I " 

Language fails to furnish a symbol. 
So Cordelia says to her sisters : — 

" I know you what you are • 
And, like a sister, am most loth to call 
Your faults as they are nam?d." 

But the most conspicuous instance in the play, the locus classi- 
cus, of bestowing names according to a knowledge of properties, 
is that volley of epithets with which Kent asserts his knowledge 
of Oswald. 

" Steward. I know thee not. 

Kent. Fellow, I know thee. ■ 

Steivard. What dost thou know me for ? 

Kent. A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats, a base, proud, shallow, beg- 
garly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave ; a lily-livered, 
action-taking knave ; a glass-gazing, super serviceable, finical rogue ; a one-trunk- 
inheriting slave," etc., — 

and so on through a long list of names, referring to the Stew- 
ard's base nature and origin. 

So intimate is the connection between language and the gnostic 
powers of the soul that every man has his style that symbolizes 



KING LEAR. 235 

his character. " The style is the man." This is exemplified as 
follows : Kent, having made some blunt speeches, for which Corn- 
wall reprimands him, replies : — 

" Sir, in good faith, in sincere verity, 

Under the allowance of your grand aspect, 

Whose influence, like the wreath of radiant fire 

On flickering Phoebus' front — 

Corn. What mean'st by this ? 

Kent. To go out of my dialect, which you discommend so much. I know, 
sir, I 'm no flatterer," etc. 

The Somersetshire dialect which Edgar, disguised as a peasant, 
uses is an instance of words symbolizing state and condition of 
life. 

These last lines of Kent point to that relation between words 
and " the form " that is always exemplified in a Shakespearian 
play. In Lear, which regards the external world as a symbol 
only, words also are regarded as symbols, — veritable when facts 
are behind them, but empty when used for flattery, for false pre- 
tense, or falsehood. Kent's lines, exaggerating the language of 
servility and flattery, are an instance ; and Goneril's and Regan's 
professions of love for their father are couched in words which 
are plainly false symbols. 

A few words may be added with regard to some prominent 
points in the diction of the piece. 

The notions of polarity, action and reaction, dualism, as they 
run throughout the real, so also do they run throughout this 
mimic, world. These notions appear in various forms, such as 
reciprocity, retribution, correlation, opposition, alternation, and 
the like. To reciprocate in its radical sense is to move bach and 
forth, to and fro, and reciprocation is a going bach upon itself, a 
returning the same way. This notion meets us even in the move- 
ments of the personages of the piece. But it is seen in its 
strongest form in the events which bring retribution. The corre- 
lation of parent and child, husband and wife, and others, enter 
essentially into the structure of the piece, and bring up at once 
the notions of reciprocity, duality, or an exchange of equivalents 
between two, or the rule of justice, equity, equality, etc. Reci- 
procity of love implies union ; of hate, opposition, including 
contrariety, contradiction, inversion, division, which last — often 
in its most violent forms of breaking, bursting, cracking, dislo- 



236 KING LEAR. 

eating — are met on every page. These notions underlie classes 
of words ; they also impart form to phrases, and occasionally 
passages of considerable length. A few — merely to establisl 
the correctness of the analysis — will be cited. 

In the following line and a half spoken by the unfortunate 
Kent to his still more unfortunate master, are found the notions 
of duality, contrariety, and reciprocity : — 

" If Fortune brag of two she lov*d and hated, 
One of them we behold" 

Lear describes his feelings and his folly by inversion : — 

" O most small fault ! 
How ugly didst thou in Cordelia shew ! 
Which, like an engine wrench'd my frame of nature 
From the first place ; drew from my heart all love, 
And added to the gall. O Lear, Lear, Lear ! 
Beat at this gate that let thy folly in 
And thy dear judgment out ! " 

Albany's counter-current of sympathy is thus expressed : — 

" I told him of the army that was landed ; 
He smiVd at it : I told him you were coming ; 
His answer was, The worse. Of Gloster's treachery 
And of the loyal service of his son 
When I inform'd him,. then he call'd me sot • 
And told me I had turned the wrong side out. 
What most he should dislike, seems pleasant to him; 
What like, offensive." 

The blunt honesty of Kent, and the sensitive pride of Lear, is 
brought out in a speech made up of contradictions, or positive 
and negative, affirmation and denial : — 

" Lear. What 's he, that hath thy place so much mistook, 
To set thee here ? 
Kent. It is both he and she, 
Your son and daughter. 
Lear. No. 
Kent. Yes. 
Lear. No, I say. 
Kent. I say, yea. 
Lear. By Jupiter, I swear, no. 
Kent. By Juno, I swear, ay. 
Lear. They durst not do 't," etc. 

Polarity is imitated in the ejaculations, "Life and Death!" 
"Night and Day!" "Heaven and Earth!" etc., and the oppo- 



KING LEAR. . 237 

site or correlative notions are constantly presented of light and 
darkness, knowledge and ignorance, friendship and enmity, flat- 
tery and plainness, superfluity and want, young and old, male 
and female, better and worse, more and less, in and out. Also 
phases denoting opposite extremes, as in Edgar's challenge : — 

" From the extremest upward of thy head 
To the descent and dust beneath thy feet, 
A most toad-spotted traitor." 

On the other hand the description of Cordelia's sorrow (Act 
IV. Sc. 3) is a beautiful instance of equality or equipoise. 

These rhetorical refinements and felicities are obvious when 
attention is once drawn to them, and it is useless to multiply 
instances. Lear has always been considered a masterpiece ; it 
is the grandest and most picturesque of tragedies ; it is also the 
noblest of apologues. Its symbolical character is maintained to 
the end. The death of Goneril, for instance, is made known by 
a gentleman who enters bearing a bloody knife. So startling a 
phenomenon calls for immediate explanation : — 

" Gent. Help, help ! O, help ! 
Edgar. What kind of help ? 
Alb. Speak, man. 
Ed. What means this bloody knife ? 
Gent. 'Tis hot, it smokes • 
It came even from the heart of — 
Alb. Who, man? speak. 
Gent. Your lady, sir, your lady,*' etc. 

Albany's comment is expressive of a horror which leaves no 
room for pity : — 

" This judgment of the heavens, that makes us tremble, 
Touches us not with pity." 

And Lear, as he holds in his arms the dead body of Cordelia, 
— an empty effigy, for to him who so loved the symbol, the sym- 
bol now is all that is left, — and vainly seeks in look and breath 
some sign of life, expiates all his errors in that breaking of the 
heart which is revealed by his request to the attendant to " undo 
the button " of his garment, — the outward sign of the inward 
fact, — and which tells us that his great chastisement is ended, 
and that " on the rack of this tough world " he will be stretched 
no longer. 

But the hanging of Cordelia — what significance has this shock- 



238 . KING LEAR. 

ing outrage to justify its introduction? Was it necessary in 
order to pour the last drop into the bitter cup the old father is 
made to drink ? or was it to complete this picture of moral con- 
fusion by a crowning instance of the triumph of villainy over 
goodness ? or was it rather to soothe us after the horrors of the 
piece by showing us the independency of virtue on fortune ? Even 
the heathen moralist tells us that " where wisdom is, fortune has 
no divinity." And this serenity and security of soul Cordelia 
herself expresses, when a captive with her father in the hands of 
her enemies, she says : — 

" For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down, 
Myself could else out-frown false Fortune's frown." 

To Cordelia death can come neither early nor late, but timely. 
" Ripeness is all." Heroism and martyrdom would lose their 
names, and their nature, too, could they look for a material reward. 
The unjustest death in the annals of the world was suffered for 
love ; and the wise poet tells us, — 

" On such sacrifices 
The Gods themselves cast incense." 

The foregoing minutice have been dwelt upon because they are 
proofs of the design of the poet, who as an artist aims at giving 
unity to his work by no superficial means nor adherence to ordi- 
nary rules, but by causing the play to be the development of a 
"form " or idea, which in this case is that of a myth or fable, the 
essence of which is to convey moral truth and a knowledge of the 
world by symbols or representative images. He was an artist 
who forgot nothing, neglected nothing, and omitted nothing that 
could conduce to effect. Founding his play on an old fable, he 
carries the spirit and characteristics of a fable into his piece, and 
makes it symbolical throughout. The dramatis personal, as we 
have seen, are mythical, being images or types of moral ideas, 
or rather of social propensities or principles, so far as is consistent 
with dramatic propriety or probability ; and the incidents and 
situations form a series of tableaux that speak to the eye and con- 
vey a significant meaning even without the aid of the dialogue. 
The characters are portrayed as recognizing a knowledge of the 
world as the only safe guide and as seeking such knowledge by 
the interpretation of looks and words as symbols of hidden mean- 
ings. The Fool speaks in parables throughout; the diction is 



KING LEAR. 239 

filled with words signifying tokens, emblems, and the like ; and 
the play, taken as a whole, is an image of the moral world, with 
its goodness and wickedness, its hollowness and truth, its wisdom 
and folly, built up for our contemplation by the poet, and fur- 
nishing a dramatic illustration or analogon to that " model of 
the world " which Bacon says it is the " aim of his philosophy 
to build in the understanding." 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 

The main incidents of the plot of this comedy are taken from 
the Gesta Romanorum, with some additions from other sources. 
Treating of the origin of this play Douce remarks : " On the 
whole, then, it is conceived that the outline of the Bond Story is of 
Oriental origin ; that the author of the old play of ' The Jew ' and 
Shakespeare in his Merchant of Venice have not confined them- 
selves to one source in the construction of their plots, but that the 
Pecorone and the Gesta Romanorum, and perhaps the old ballad 
of Gernutus, have been particularly resorted to. It is, however, 
most probable that the original play was indebted chiefly, if not 
altogether, to the Gesta Romanorum, which contained both the 
main incidents ; and that Shakespeare expanded and improved 
them, partly from his own genius and partly, as to the Bond, from 
the Pecorone, where the coincidences are too manifest to leave 
any doubt." 

This opinion, which condenses into a few words pretty much all 
that can be said about the sources of this play, evidently implies 
that Shakespeare found its ground-plan in the old play of " The 
Jew " (mentioned by Gosson in his " School of Abuse," as repre- 
senting " the greediness of worldly choosers and the bloody minds 
of usurers "), but notwithstanding the strong probability of this 
there is reason for supposing that he had the Gesta Romanorum 
before him, for he seems to have taken the constructive idea of 
the piece from the peculiar and characteristic feature which gave 
to that work its special literary form. The Gesta Romanorum 
was the most famous and popular of those collections of stories 
made in the 13th and 14th centuries to be used by the preachers 
and monks as texts for sermons or as examples illustrative of 
some theological or moral doctrine. They were regarded as para- 
bles with a double meaning, derived from the analogy they pre- 
sented between the sensible and spiritual worlds. Each story had 
its " morality " attached to it, and this " morality " was considered 
the important part of the work, the story itself being held of but 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 241 

little value except as an example to illustrate the doctrine. These 
" promptuaries of examples " were very numerous, and constituted 
a distinct class of writings ; and, indeed, it was the fashion of 
those times to moralize fictions of all kinds ; even Ovid's Meta- 
morphoses were thus treated, and the "morals" yet appended 
to iEsop's Fables are supposed to have originated in this practice. 
The Gesta was*entitled " Gesta Romanorum Moralizata" and 
an edition of an English translation of Fifty-eight stories has 
the following title-page : " Gesta Romanorum or Fifty-eight Sto- 
ries originally (it is said) collected from the Roman records with 
applications of morals for thelsuppressing of vice and increasing 
of virtue and the love of God^ by B. P., adorned with cuts, 
very pleasant to read and profitable to practice." x 

The poet, therefore, in borrowing two of these stories as matter 
for his play, preserves their allegorical features and combines 
them in a plot, which may be thus briefly stated : — 

Portia, an heiress, whose immense wealth and rare personal en- 
dowments, both physical and mental, render her a representative 
of the highest material and moral worth, has a seat at Belmont, 
not far from Venice, and hither resort renowned suitors from all 
parts of the world to seek her in marriage. She herself has no 
voice in the matter, the disposal of her hand being dependent on 
a lottery devised by her father and enjoined by his will, which 
binds her to marry any suitor who shall choose the one of three 
caskets that contains her picture. These caskets are of gold, 
silver, and lead respectively, and bear certain ambiguous inscrip- 
tions, which, together with the estimates familiarly associated 
with the metals of which they are made, are supposed so to influ- 
ence the mind that no suitor can make the right choice but one 
who is worthy of success. Bassanio, a young Venetian nobleman, 
loves Portia and is loved by her, but she refuses to marry him un- 
less he can win her at the same hazard the others take. He is 
resolved, however, to put his fortunes to the test, but a somewhat 
prodigal mode of life having left him without the means to visit 
Belmont, he applies to his friend Antonio, a rich merchant, for 
aid. Antonio willingly grants the request, but all " his fortunes 
being then at sea," and not having at the moment the needed sum 

1 For an account of these stories, collected and invented 1>\ ilir preachers and 
monks for pulpit use, see Warton's History of Poetry, and Douce's Dissertation on the 

Gesta Eo manor u m . 

16 



242 THE MERCHANT OF'VEXICE. 

in hand, he asks a loan of Shylock, a Jew, on whom and whose 
religion, Antonio, through Christian prejudice, had frequently- 
heaped contumely, for which in turn Shylock cherishes against 
him a secret and implacable hate. The Jew, however, seeing in 
the circumstances a possible opportunity for revenge, affects a 
friendly feeling and agrees to lend the money, refusing to take 
any interest for the use of it, at the same time ^suggesting, as if 
in sport, that Antonio give him a bond, the penalty of which, in- 
stead of a sum of money to be paid, shall name as a forfeit a 
pound of flesh to be cut off Antonio's body nearest his heart. 
The merchant, confident of the return of his ships, " seals to the 
bond,*' and Bassanio departs for Belmont, where he is successful 
in choosing the right casket : but, in the midst of his joy, he 
learns that Antonio, through great and unexpected losses, has not 
been able to pay the Jew, and that the latter is loudly clamoring 
for justice and the enforcement of the bond. Bassanio at once 
hastens to his friend, and Portia at the same time secretly starts 
for Venice, where she appears in court, disguised as a doctor of 
laws, who has been summoned from Padua to adjudge the case, 
She offers the Jew thrice the amount of his bond, and urges upon 
him with the greatest force and eloquence to show mercy to his 
debtor. But Shylock is implacable, and demands judgment for 
the pound of flesh according to the strict letter of the instrument. 
This the court awards, but, pushing Shylock's own literal inter- 
pretation to the extreme, decides that he must take neither more 
nor less than a just pound, and must not spill one drop of blood, 
or else his life is forfeit. This, of course, rescues Antonio from 
the danger in which the Jew's want of charity had placed him. 

It is obvious that these incidents can find place only in a world 
of romance, and that the story is invented simply as a fanciful 
yet impressive example to instruct us in a Christian or moral 
lesson. 

The skill with which are united the discordant materials of this 
play, which differ as widely in tone as a mercantile transaction 
differs from the wildest romance, has been remarked upon by the 
commentators, but something more than skill in marshaling the 
movements of a plot, or in " blending two actions in one event," 
is required to bring under one and the same principle — and thus 
reduce to moral unity — such heterogeneous elements as the mutual 
hatred and contempt of Jew and Christian, the avarice of Shy- 



THE MEKCHANT OF VENICE. 243 

lock and the munificence of Antonio, the conduct and motives 
of the suitors in making choice of the caskets, the conservatism of 
Portia, the insubordination of Jessica, the rigor of the Venetian 
law, and the loquacity and prolixity of Gratiano and Gobbo. 

The "form," or idea, which governs the construction of the 
fable of a Shakespearian play, always contains some leading con- 
ception which from its frequent recurrence may be taken as the 
key-note of the piece : in The Merchant of Venice the " form " is 
that of an example illustrating a moral truth. But an example 
is one of a class and is taken as a specimen of the whole class, 
and whether it is used as illustration or as argument, its force 
lies in resemblance or analogy ; consequently the conceptions of 
analogy, similitude, proportion, sameness, etc., are met with in all 
parts of the piece. As this comedy, moreover, in keeping with 
its title, deals with questions of worth and valuation, the distinc- 
tion between the worlds of soul and sense, which always enters 
into a Shakespearian picture of life, becomes in this play the 
difference between moral and material values ; and the incidents 
of the play, however varied in circumstance, are all analogous in 
being examples illustrating the same truth, that is, the necessity 
of correctly judging of values and discriminating between the 
real and factitious. The characters, also, exhibit their balance of 
mind, or else their partialities and prepossessions, by the correct 
or incorrect estimates they make of men and things. In the 
choice of the caskets by " Morocco " and " Aragon," the sub- 
stance is sacrificed to show and ornament ; in the enforcement 
of the bond, the letter of the law prevails over its spirit ; the same 
principle appears in Portia's adherence to the arbitrary obliga- 
tion she is under by reason of her father's will, notwithstanding 
her natural right to consult her own wishes in her marriage, while 
the negative instance is found in Jessica's claim to decide her 
happiness through an equity that overrides parental authority; 
and still other analogous instances are presented in the idle talk 
of Gobbo and S r rafe mry, who use many words to express but little 
matter. 

All these instances stand harmoniously together ; they all are 
over-valuations of the unessential and are errors of the same class 
— differing only in degree — with those more serious ones on 
which the most important movements of the play depend, that is, 
the false estimates which men make of each other under the influ- 



244 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 



ence of prejudice growing out of individual and complexiona 
peculiarities, instead of resting their judgments upon the qualities 
and attributes of the soul, in which their real worth consists 

In accordance, also, with the " idea " of an example or a story 
that illustrates a " moral," the characters in their discourses fre- 
quently run parallels between the objects of the sense and moral 
facts, as when Portia says, — 



: How far that little candle throws his beams ! 
So shines a good deed in a naughty world," — 









which two lines are a parable in themselves. 

So the princes of Morocco and Aragon, as well as Bassanio, 
favor us with impressive homilies upon the respective texts in- 
scribed on the caskets ; all the characters abound in illustration 
and allusion; their logic is inductive, consisting of arguments 
drawn from precedents and analogy, and the whole piece, or at 
least that predominant part of it which gives it its overpowering 
interest, sets before us in visible type and figure how poor is ma- 
terial wealth compared with love and mercy, the practice of which 
in human intercourse is the fundamental doctrine of Christianity 
as announced in the Sermon on the Mount. 

This last is an appropriate moral background, inasmuch as a 
play which is founded on the idea of an " illustrative example," 
and which is, therefore, an exemplar of such examples, must teach a 
doctrine broad and comprehensive enough to contain all "morals" 
within its scope, and therefore The Merchant of Venice exempli- 
fies the Christian charity " that fulfilleth the law." 

It may be added that it is not so much a science or an art as a 
doctrine that this play elucidates, for where the greatest value, 
that is, the highest moral worth, is the object of the desires, the 
means used to attain it are the practice of love of one's fellow 
men, and this practice, reduced to precept, finds its best expression 
in Christian doctrine. Vide De Aug. Book VII. ch. iii. 

In order to portray in dramatic form the importance of guard- 
ing against the sacrifice of the essential to the factitious, or, in 
other words, the necessity of judging correctly of the values of 
things, the poet places his scene in Venice, a city devoted to 
pleasure and commerce, and presenting a sphere of life where the 
factitious is most frequently taken for reality and material values 
are held of higher account than moral worth. In a mercantile 









THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 245 

sense, a good man is one who meets his pecuniary obligations 
, however sordid or vile his character may be. 

The business of the merchant is the quest of gain ; but all men 
are merchants in one sense ; they all are in quest of some good, 
the acquisition of which they consider a gain ; and in the com- 
merce of the world, as in the world of commerce, he is the most 
successful who can best judge of values. But the highest values, 
as all experience teaches, are truth, love, wisdom, and other forms 
of moral worth, yet the bulk of mankind, — 

" The fool multitude who judge by show, 
Not learning more than the fond eye doth teach 
That pries not to the interior," — 

set more store by material and tangible wealth ; and these differ- 
ent estimates, as affecting men's relations, are particularly seen in 
those cases of creditor and debtor, where penalties and forfeitures 
having been incurred, they are either pitilessly enforced through 
love of money or remitted through charity and forbearance. 

The commercial side of Venetian life is represented by Antonio 
and . Shylock, while Gratiano, Salanio, Lorenzo, and others may 
stand for the pleasure-seekers of that gay capital. These latter 
seem to be occupied only with mirth, masques, and feasting. 
Their manners, as they display them, are distinctively Christian, 
and are not more defined by the love and courtesy that prevail 
among themselves than by the bitter prejudices they entertain, on 
religious grounds, against the Jews ; and this leads to the consid- 
eration of the moral doctrines which underlie the characteriza- 
tion of the play, and which may be summarized in two brief but 
leading texts of Christian morality, of which one is " Love thy 
neighbor as thyself," and the other is the golden rule : " There- 
fore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, 
do ye even so to them, for this is the law and prophets " (Matt- 
vii. 12). 

The spirit of these precepts, which in perfection is found only 
in the Divine Exemplar, shines through the piece, taking form in 
the courtesy and beneficence of Portia, Antonio, and the group 
around them, and bringing into strong relief the Mosaic lex 
talionis : " And thine eye shall not pity, but life shall go for life-* 
eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot'* (Dent. 
x. 19), which finds a powerful exponent in the Hebrew Shylock. 

The "golden rule," which is as regulative of the heart as of 



246 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 

the judgment and is an epitome of all rules, is necessarily that 
higher law which fits every case and to which, if human law does 
not conform, it is iniquitous and oppressive, and consequently a 
veritable sacrifice of the essential to the factitious. As it is stated 
in the play, it is hardly less comprehensive than in the original 

text : — 

" In the course of justice none of us 
Should see salvation : We do pray for mercy 
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 
The deeds of mercy " 

By this precept, every man's wish for his own good is made a 
rule for his conduct towards others. The judgment by which we 
decide what is due from others to ourselves is a precedent whereby 
to determine what we owe to others, or as Whateley states it : "A 
man's judgment in one case may be aided or corrected by an 
appeal to his judgment in another similar case. It is in this way 
we are directed by the highest authority to guide our judgment in 
those questions' in which we are most liable to deceive ourselves, 
viz., what on each occasion ought to be our conduct towards an- 
other ; we are directed to frame for ourselves a similar supposed 
case by imagining ourselves to change places with our neighbors 
and then considering how, in that case, we should in fairness 
expect to be treated." 

The golden rule is therefore a piece of reasoning which rests 
on example, and — that it should be imperative on the conscience 
, — our own example. 

It is evident that the force of the precept is derived from the 
essential sameness of nature in all men, growing out of a common 
reason and heart, that binds them in one brotherhood through 
which one is an example for all. But this essential sameness of 
nature is varied and thwarted by infinite individual peculiarities 
arising from differences of temperament and constitution, and also 
of race, creed, sect, country, which under the general name of 
" the affections " bias the feelings, warp the judgment, and assign 
the highest value to that which is merely formal and superficial. 
" Where the treasure is, there will the heart be also." Men 
should love best what is of the highest intrinsic worth, but in 
practice this rule is generally reversed, and they prize highest 
that which enlists their selfish affections and desires, without ref- 
erence to its real value. And out of these gross prejudices and 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 247 

false valuations arise the animosities and hatreds that fill society 
with strife and the lives of individuals with disappointment and 
wretchedness. 

In practice, the love of one's neighbor manifests itself in courtesy 
and the gratuitous bestowal of favors and benefits, and is the 
direct opposite of that love of money and greed of gain which 
demand pay for every service and use for every loan, and in the 
extreme become avarice, a passion that absorbs the whole nature 
of the man and blights and withers every noble affection. 

These well-worn truisms become brilliant in effect and novel 
in interest as put before us in the examples of Antonio the Chris- 
tian and Shylock the Jew. 

Of all human concerns, there is none in which the form is so 
habitually mistaken for the substance as in matters of religion. 
Questions of conscience and creed are those over which prejudice 
holds the strongest sway. Charity, the essence of all religion, 
is forgotten in fierce contentions over rubric and ritual. Men 
rack and impale and burn each other alive, not because they do 
not worship the same Creator, but because they worship him in 
different modes. There is no greater blot on human nature, no 
fouler stain on Christianity, than the barbarous and intolerant 
treatment of the Jews during the Middle Ages. Scattered in 
comparatively small numbers throughout the nations of Christen- 
dom, despised and reviled for their nationality and their creed, 
they could offer no resistance to the atrocities that were perpe- 
trated upon them in the name of religion. Even their helpless- 
ness could excite no generous feeling in their behalf. ( Shylock, 
one of this race, is brought before us not only as a type of a 
Jew, but also, more broadly and generally, as a victim of perse- 
cution. He is an outcast in the community in which he dwells ; 
an " infidel," a "villain," a " dog," by inheritance. He stands 
entirely without the pale of Christian sympathy. He is supposed 
to know no touch of generosity or of courtesy ; to harbor no 
design but of craft and villainy. His successes are looked upon 
as results of the most infamous practices ; his direst misfortunes 
excite only unfeeling jeers and laughter. No epithet of con- 
tempt, no indignity of treatment, is spared him. Driven from 
every high and honorable employment, that might otherwise have 
expanded his mind and dignified his manners, the Jew has given 
up his subtle intellect to a sordid love of gain. The genius of 



248 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 

the Hebrew, that once found voice in prophecy and song, is now 
dwindled to sharpness at a bargain and craft in obtaining small 
advantages. Yet beneath all the pressure of outrageous persecu- 
tion, he still shows the unconquerable tenacity and fortitude of 
his race. He has learned to bear the insults and contumely that 
are heaped upon him " with a patient shrug," and takes new 
heart when he reflects that it is for his religion that he suffers, 
and that " sufferance is the badge of all his tribe." He repays, 
too, Christian contempt with Jewish hate. His manhood is still 
alive within him. Though he bends low and speaks humbly, he 
shuts up in his bosom a thirst for vengeance like a burning coal. 
The obloquy that is poured upon him only fixes and strengthens 
his feelings, as some streams, instead of wearing away the objects 
they encounter, harden them into flint. Despised because he is 
a Jew, he is all the prouder to be a Jew ; reviled for his usury, 
he clings to his gains with something of religious zeal, even for 
the hate he bears the Christians who revile him. These two pas- 
sions — love of money and hatred of Christians — go hand in 
hand in his nature, and serve to augment and strengthen each 
other, as two currents, turned into the same channel, swell each 
other's force. Appealing to the sacred traditions of his nation 
in support of his " thrift," he reinforces his avarice with his re- 
ligion and his hatred of Christians with his avarice. True, he is 
willing to buy revenge at " a good round sum," but even this is 
not a predominance of hate over his love of money ; his sharp 
eye sees in it a profitable investment, it being likely to remove a 
rival whose liberality has greatly interfered with his gains. " I 
will have the heart of him if he forfeit," he exclaims of Antonio, 
who had loaded him with insults so intolerable that, had Shylock 
been a Christian, he would have wiped them out instantly in 
blood ; but adds, " for were he out of Venice, / can make what 
merchandise I will" 

Antonio is the type of the Christian as Shylock is of the 
Jew ; and the bitterness and contempt they entertain for each 
other are examples of the animosities engendered by the clash of 
mutual bigotries. The first lines that Shylock utters sets this 
before us : — 

" I hate him, for he is a Christian : 
But more for that, in low simplicity, 
He lends out money gratis, and brings down 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 249 

The rate of usance here with us in Venice. 
If I can catch him once upon the hip 
I will feed fat the ancient grudge I hear him. 
He hates our sacred nation, and he rails 
On me, my bargains, and my well-icon thrift, 
Which he calls interest : Cursed be my tribe, 
If I forgive him ! " 

This is plain exchange of hate for hate. 

Antonio is as great a bigot as Shylock. Munificent as the 
Jew is miserly, he is equally narrow-minded in matters of re- 
ligion. His Christian charity has not breadth enough to take in 
the Jew. Apart from this, he is very admirable. His gentle- 
ness, his generosity, his patience and self-sacrificing love are 
painted as characteristics of his race and creed. He is one to 
whom his friends are devoted ; one than whom 

"No kinder gentleman treads the earth." 

He is described as 

" The kindest man, 
The best conditioned and unwearied spirit, 
In doing courtesies, and one in whom 
The ancient Roman honor more appears 
Than any that draws breath in Italy." 

It would be Antonio's boast — as no doubt it would be the 
boast of his friends concerning him — that he is a Christian gen- 
tleman ; yet in his treatment of the Jew, this kindest man, this 
courteous spirit, is neither a Christian nor a gentleman. Shylock 
has never injured him nor provoked him, but merely because he 
is of the Hebrew race, and sees fit to lend his money at interest 
(for usury in this play means simply interest and not excess of 
it), Antonio, forgetful of Christian love, of common humanity, 
forgetful even that the Jew is a man, has no word for him but 
one of insult, no conduct towards him but insufferable outrage 
and scorn. Shylock says : — 

" You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, 
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine ; 
And all for use of that which is mine own. 
Well, then, it now appears you need my help : 
(Jo to, then — you come to me, and you say, 
Shylock, we would have moneys ; you say so ; 
You, that did raid your rheum upon my heard, 
And foot me, as you spurn a stranger cur 
Over your threshold ; — moneys is your suit," eto. 



250 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 

" Ant. I am as like to call thee so again. 
To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too. 
If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not 
As to thy friends," etc. 

It is startling to find how an otherwise lovely character can be 
disfeatured by the indulgence of a national and religious prejudice, 
which, utterly blind to the fact that Jew and Christian participate 
in a common manhood and are alike the creatures of the Father 
of all, can occasion so deep an aversion to a fellow-being merely 
on account of an accidental difference of race and creed. But let 
us quote Shylock's terse statement of the case. 

" He hath disgraced me and hindered me of half a million, laughed at my 
losses, mocked at my gains/heated my enemies ; and what 9 s his reason ? I am a 
Jew." 

Shylock then proceeds to show the insufficiency of this reason 
and justifies himself by Christian example. 

"Hath not a Jew eyes ? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, 
affections, passions ? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, sub- 
ject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the 
same winter and summer, as a Christian is ? If you prick us, do we not bleed ? 
if you tickle us, do we not laugh ? if you poison us, do we not die ?f and if you 
wrong us, shall we not revenge f if we are like you in the rest, we will resemole you 
in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility ? revenge j if a Christian 
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example f why, revenge. 
The villainy you teach me, I will execute ; and it shall go hard, but I will better 
the instruction." 

There can be no more vivid picture than this, of the rancor 
that grows out of the false estimates which both Jew and Chris- 
tian place upon differences merely formal and unessential. 

Shylock's avarice is another instance of an all-absorbing " affec- 
tion " that leads to undue valuation of that which has but facti- 
tious worth. He prizes money for itself, and not for what it will 
procure. He loses sight of the fact that it is but a representative 
of value, having no intrinsic worth in itself ; that its best and first 
use by its possessor is to fill his home, as far as may be, with 
happiness and promote all the sweet charities of domestic life. 
But Shylock's penury has made his " house a hell," and has 
alienated the affection of his only child. Had he retained or 
gained her love, it had been of more worth to him than all his 
wealth, whereas his love of money has cramped and crushed her 
sympathies. She had become reluctantly and not without misgiv- 
ings 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 251 

" Asham'd to be her father's child 
And, though she was a daughter to his blood, 
She was not to his manners." 

She elopes with a Christian — more hateful and despicable in 
his estimation than one of the stock of Barabbas — and carries with 
her a goodly portion of his hoarded ducats. Here begins the re- 
tribution ; he thinks her flight and robbery of him a curse that 
falls upon him as a Jew. He says, " The curse never fell upon 
our nation till now ; I never felt it till now ; " he mistakes ; it is 
the recoil upon himself of his own avarice. So deeply is his na- 
ture perverted by that sordid passion, and so blinded is his judg- 
ment to the true worth of things, that he sets more store by his 
wealth than he does by his child, and in a frenzy of mingled rage 
and grief he prays for the restoration of his jewels and money, 
even at the cost of his daughter's life. 

" I would my daughter were dead at my foot and the jewels in her ear ! 
would she were hearsed at my foot and the ducats in her coffin ! " 

But the retribution reaches not its climax, until he is made to 
feel through his deepest affections how much, after all, moral 
worth transcends mere material value. This is brought home to 
him by conduct on the part of Jessica which shows how far his 
neglect of her, in his pursuit of gain, has deadened in her heart 
all domestic sympathies and family ties. He is told by Tubal 
that she has parted with his " turquoise." It was a ring, a love- 
token, given him in the days of his courtship, by his Leah, the 
memory of whom seems the only sweet feeling in his hard and 
arid nature. This ring was to him of inestimable value, for it 
was the representative of a thousand memories, the priceless riches 
of the heart ; but to Jessica, who had grown up without culture of 
the domestic affections, it had no moral value whatever : to her, it 
is only a trinket and she exchanges it for a — monkey ! The cry 
of anguish that bursts from the Jew, when told of this, discloses 
how keenly he feels the want of sympathy on the part of his child, 
that could lead her to so painfully false a valuation. 

"Out upon her ! Thou torturest me, Tubal ; it was my turquoise : I had it 
of Leah, when I was a bachelor ; T would not have given it for a wilderness oj 

monkeys" 

The character of Antonio, likewise, presents an example of the 
disappointment and unhappiness that spring from an overesti- 



252 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 






mate of that which has no solid value. Antonio, the merchant of 
Venice, a man of great wealth, beloved by his friends and seem- 
ingly possessed of all that can render life pleasant is, nevertheless, 
afflicted with a deep sadness, for which he can assign no cause. 
But the reader is permitted to know him better than he knows 
himself. Antonio's pride is to be a " royal merchant." He prizes 
wealth, not in a miserly spirit, for he is munificent in the ex- 
treme, but for the consideration it gives him, — nay, for this very 
munificence. It is his pride to come " smug upon the mart," as 
Shylock invidiously describes him, and "to lend money for a 
Christian courtesy" Life has no value for him unless accom- 
panied by riches. To be poor is, in his estimation, to be wretched. 
He so far overestimates the goods of Fortune that he stakes his 
happiness upon possessing them. In his desire to increase his 
wealth, he has ventured his whole estate upon the risks of a single 
year. A merchant in the largest sense, he has sent his ships to 
every quarter of the world. Hitherto fortune has favored him, 
but a doubt now arises in his mind whether mischance may not 
overtake him. A sense of coming loss oppresses him. He has 
listened to whisperings in the soul that admonish him how transi- 
tory are the gifts of Fortune, how hollow the expectations that are 
built upon them. And so deeply is he " affected " — though un- 
consciously to himself — with a sense of this unreality that the 
world itself appears to him but a shadowy pageant, and he says to 
Gratiano : — 

" I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano ; 
A stage, where every man must play his part, 
And mine a sad one." 

A presentiment of misfortune, inspired by unbroken prosperity 
— a feeling beautifully exampled by the ancients in the tale of 
the ring of Polycrates — has cast its shadow upon his soul, and 
the gaunt spectre of poverty has stalked into his imagination. 
Even the sympathy and gayety of his friends, who try to rally him 
out of his sadness, fail to lighten the load this apprehension lays 
upon him. Yet he does not admit, even to himself, that he enter- 
tains this fear ; he denies that " he is sad to think upon his mer- 
chandise," or that his whole fortune is at stake, but immediately 
afterward, when applied to by Bassanio for a loan (which brings 
the question to a practical test) he says : — 



THE MERCHANT . OF VENICE. 253 

" Thou knowest all my fortunes are at sea, 
Neither have I money nor commodity 
To raise a present sum" etc. 

Besides, the result, ending in his total ruin, attests the fact. 

This character not only exhibits an instance of false valuation, 
in the undue exaltation given to external fortune as a source of 
happiness over the inward resources of the soul, — a veritable sac- 
rifice of the essential to the accidental, — but it is also conceived 
with exquisite skill in view of the part Antonio has afterwards to 
play. For when, after having lost his wealth, he falls into the 
power of the Jew, he rather welcomes death than avoids it. He 
has lost all that, in his estimation, makes life valuable, and yields 
to his fate with scarce a struggle. His worst anticipations have 
proved true, and death has no terrors for him. He tells Bas- 
sanio : — 

" For herein Fortune shows herself more kind 
Than is her custom. It is still her use 
To let the wretched man outlive his wealth, 
To view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow 
An age of poverty, from which lingering penance 
Of such a misery doth she cut me off." 

This disposition of Antonio gives an air of probability to his 
unparalleled spirit of self-sacrifice, and arms him with that 
" patience " and " quietness of spirit," that Christian gentleness, 
which brings out with greater dramatic effect " the tyranny and 
rage " of the Jew. 

If it were now the fashion, as it was in the thirteenth and four- 
teenth centuries, for preachers to illustrate their discourses by pro- 
fane stories and allegories, they could not do better, while preach- 
ing from sectarian pulpits the love of one's neighbor, than to point 
to the story of Antonio and Shylock as an example of the hateful 
traits of human character originating in a want of Christian love 
and tolerance ; and it may be noted that so powerful an influence 
has this dramatic example exercised among all English-speaking 
people that " Shylock " and his " pound of flesh ? ' is a proverbial 
phrase for a cruel creditor and his pitiless exactions. 

The trial scene is another striking exemplification of the funda- 
mental principle of the play in the adherence of the Court to the 
letter of the law to the utter sacrifice of its spirit. The Court of 
Venice, it would seem, had a superstitious regard for precedent. 




254 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 

.For the sake of giving assurance to the many strangers that 
traded with the city, it was the policy of the Venetian law that all 
commercial forfeitures should be enforced to the very letter. This 
was the law, and 

" There was no power in Venice 
That could alter a decree established." 

This point is enforced with unusual care, as well because it 
brings into stronger relief the absurdity of the principle as because 
it is the means of developing and punishing the vindictiveness of 
the Jew. He threatens 

u To impeach the State 
If they deny him justice ; twenty magnificos 
Of greatest port have all persuaded with him 
But none can drive him from his envious plea 
Of forfeiture, of justice, and his bond." 

It is manifest to all that Shy lock's clamor for justice is but to 
convert the law into an instrument of his revenge. He rests his 
claim solely upon arbitrary right, upon the force and validity 
given to a scrap of writing and a waxen seal ; and he hopes to 
gain his ends through the inability of the fixed letter of the law to 
mould itself to the equitable circumstances of the case. No con- 
scientious scruples may be admitted ; and the interest of the scene 
is derived from the attempts that are made to induce the Jew to 
relinquish the extreme rights, which the formal rules of an arti- 
ficial system give him, by pointing out to him his duty towards a 
fellow-being under the broad and universal principles of natural 
equity and forbearance. The Duke urges upon him with great 
weight that it is the law of " human gentleness and love " which 
should govern his conduct in such a case ; but Shylock's expe- 
rience has not prepared him for an easy reception of such a 
principle. He doubts, too, the validity of it ; he affects to believe 
that men are governed by humors, whims, and constitutional an- 
tipathies ; in short, by what is individual and peculiar to them- 
selves, and not by any universal principle of love for one another ; 
and scruples not to affirm that, in his own case, — 

" It is a lodged hate and certain loathing 
He bears Antonio, that he follows thus 
A losing suit against him," — 

a direct antithesis of love of one's neighbor. 






f 



>< 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 255 

The danger in which Antonio stands from the malice of the 
Jew brings into contrast the worthlessness of money with the 
value men give to those things on which they set their hearts. 
This appears in the disdain with which Portia offers to pay the 
"petty debt" as soon as she learns that a friend of her husband 
is bound to the Jew : — 

" Por. What sum owes he the Jew ? 
Bass. For me, three thousand ducats. 
Por. What, no more ? 

Pay him six thousand and deface the bond : 
Double six thousand and then treble that 
Before a friend of this description 
Shall lose a hair through BassamVs fault." 

On the other hand, the Jew, avaricious as he is, holds in this 
instance money light in comparison with the gratification of his 
revenge. 

" If every ducat in six thousand ducats 
Were in six parts and every part a ducat 
I would not draw them. I would have my bond." 

Bassanio appeals to the Judge to decide upon the equity of the 
case. 

" I will be bound to pay it ten times o'er 
On forfeit of my hands, my head, my heart. 
If this will not suffice, it must appear 
That malice bears down truth. And, I beseech you, 
Wrest once the law to your authority : 
To do a great right, do a little wrong ; 
And curb this cruel devil of his will." 

But Portia is inflexible in her respect for precedent, and tells 
him, — / 

" 'T will be recorded for a precedent ; 
And many an error by the same example 
Will rush into the State : it cannot be." 

Shylock, on his side, justifies his pursuit of a technical advan- 
tage by citing other cases of glaring infractions of natural right, 
strenuously upheld by law. 

" You have among you many a purchased slave 
Which, like your asses and your dogs and nudes, 
You use in abject and in slavish parts 
Because you bought them. Shall I say to you, 
Let them be free, marry them to your heirs ? ( 



IM THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 

Why sweat fchej under burthens ? let their beds 
Be made as soil as yours and Let their palates 

Be SeaSOn'd with SUOh viands? you will answer, 

The slaves are ours : So do 1 answer you : 

The pound offlesh, which I demand of him 

Ts dearly bought, is mine, and 1 will have it," etc. 

This argument is valid so Bar as law and precedent can make 
it so; but Portia slates the true rule and places her appeal to the 
Jew Eor mercy on the ground that all men, through a common 
frailty, stand in need of mercy ; still, what effect could this plea 
have upon Shylook ? What practical teaching had lie ever had 
of such a rule? When had he ever been commiserated in mis- 
fortune? Besides, his Jewish mind, educated ill strict observ- 
ance of ritual and typo to the loss of spirit and essence, will not 

look beyond the literal interpretation of his bond. It is not sur- 
prising, therefore, that he is willing to take his chance of the 
severity which he inflicts upon others being visited upon himself, 
and defiantly says : — 

M My deeds upon my head. / cnir, (he lair." 

Portia, onoe more, endeavors to reach his avarice, and otters 
him thrice the amount of his debt. [f he refuses, it will be made 
dear that he does not wish Eor justice, but IS seeking Antonio's 

life. The wily Jew, who wishes to stand fair with the Judge, 

perceives this drift, but adroitly escapes the inference that might 
be drawn from his declining so very liberal an offer by adverting 
to an obligation he is under, which all must admit has for him a 

value to outweigh, not merely his debt, but even the wealth of the 
whole State. 

" An <><////, an oath, I havi an oath in Heaven, 

Shall I lay perjury upon my soul ? 
No, not for T< nice." 

The strict interpretation that gives Shyloek judgment, though 
leading to the absurdity of permitting a murder under color of 
law, yet enforces the contract, and so far is consistent with itself; 
but being pushed 'a little further, it leads to the second and, if 
possible, greater absurdity o[ defeating itself by coupling with the 
judgment a condition that renders its enforcement impossible. It 
is but an illustration of the ride that extremes pass into their con- 
traries. It saves Antonio's life, it is true, but it is at the expense 
of all law and the denial of all justice ; nay, more, it is at the 



THE MERCHANT OP VKNICK. 257 

expense of Shylock's lifo, unless saved by that mercy of which be 
had ho arrogantly thought himself in no need. By the reaction 

inherent in the nature of every wrong, the law, wliieli Sliyloek 
had e-alled upon to exeeute his maliee, reeoils upon his own head, 

and proves bis destruction. Like the evil magician in the Ger- 
man story, be summons a demon for his wicked purposes on con- 
dition of providing him with a victim, and, failing in this, Calls 
himself a prey to the power be had evoked. 

The value thus given to the letter of the law goes deeper than 
a mere principle of commercial policy. Ii, is the spirit of eon 
servatism, which clings to law and custom, however- antiquated or 
effete, and seeks to fetter, in permanent forms, the many-shaping, 
ever-shifting life which alone gives Eorm validity. Abstracted 
from personal and selfish considerations, it is, no doubt, noble 

in its origin, as it springs from an instinctive reverence for the 

right and true, but in its overestimate of the value of precedent 
it takes no heed of the dictates of the everlasting law of progress 
innate in man. The restless soul, in its unquenchable thirst, for 
novelty, is ever embodying itself in new forms and manifesting 
itself in new action ; yet as it ever finds fruition a disappointment, 

it hurries onward after some fresh object of desire. This dis- 
position to change and to innovate, which, as the opposite of con- 
servatism, furnishes an SBSthetic eounlerpoise to the influence of 

example and precedent, so largely involved in the incidents of the 
piece, finds expression in the following lines, the imagery and 
diction of which are beautifully characteristic of residents of a 
gay and commercial city. It is, moreover, a bit of inductive 
reasoning, and closes with an " illustrative example." 

" Solar* O, ten timet faster Venus' pigeona fly 
To seal Love'i bondi new made, than they are won! 
To keep obliged faith unforfeited I 
Ora. That evei boldi ; who rieeth from a fea i 
With that keen appetite that he fiti down ' 
Where 11 the hone that doth untread again 
Hi:-, tedion i men urea irith the nnbated Are 
That be did paee then first? All thingi thai are, 
Are wiUi more vpirit chu led than enjoy'd. 
I low Like :« younger or a prodigal 
The searfed bark puti from her native b 
Hugg'd and embraced by the itrumpet wind ' 
How lil<<; ;i prodigal doth sin- return, 
17 



258 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 

With overweather'd ribs and ragged sails, 
Lean, rent and beggar'd by the strumpet wind ! " 






It is this law of progress, taking the impulse of the hour for its 
rule of action, that is at war with that idolatry of form which 
strives to bind down the bursting life and new development of the 
present moment in the chains of a dead and obsolete past ; even 
as Portia with a heart full of love and longing is fettered in the 
dearest wishes of her soul by the will of her dead father. But 
Portia is a good conservative ; she is too wise not to know that 
" to do " is not so easy " as to know what 't is good to do," that 
"a hot temper leaps over a cold decree," and that the "naughty 
times " require a stricter rule than can be found in the impulses of 
so erring a creature as man, even though that rule does sometimes 
"put bars betwixt the owners and their rights." She believes, 
with Nerissa, that " holy men have virtuous inspirations," and 
that their injunctions must, by a moral necessity, work to happy 
issues. Therefore, though her happiness is seemingly put at stake 
by the terms of her father's will, in a matter wherein in all reason 
and by every maxim of morality she might claim a free choice 
and a right to follow the impulses of her own nature, she still with 
filial veneration and true respect for authority avows her obedi- 
ence. 

" If I live to be as old as Sybilla, I will die as chaste as Diana, unless I be 
obtained by the manner of my father's will." 

The authority of Portia's father rests on his wisdom, virtue, 
and parental affection. He purposes the welfare of his child and 
is wise enough to secure it. He has " holy inspirations." The 
relation that exists between him and her is a real thing and not 
an empty form, and it is this that secures Portia's loyalty to his 
authority. 

In this feature of the drama, and, in fact, in the whole conduct 
of the plot referring to the caskets, the allegorical character of 
the original story is delicately preserved without at all impairing 
the dramatic interest of the piece as a picture of reality, yet we 
plainly see that the incidents are emblematic of moral truths. 

Contrasted with Portia is Jessica, who represents the free, the 
spontaneous, and insubordinate, and whose affections are estranged 
from her father by his parsimony and moroseness. She had for 
him neither love nor respect ; nor does he consider her feelings or 






THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 259 

her welfare. He would immure her in his cheerless mansion and 
deprive her of all enjoyments suitable to her age. The relation 
which exists between them has become an empty form, utterly 
void of all the sentiment or affection which should constitute its 
essence and give it a moral value. Jessica places upon this empty 
husk of parental relationship no false estimate ; her soul is at 
strife between filial duty and her love for Lorenzo ; she obeys the 
impulses of the latter as being a substantial thing, and finds her 
happiness in becoming " a Christian and a loving wife." 

Portia is a model of excellence. There is not a quality nor an 
attribute that can lend a charm to woman, or worth to character, 
which she does not possess. She has virtue, wisdom, wit, beauty, 
love, courtesy, goodness, eloquence, with every adventitious ad- 
vantage of wealth, birth, culture, station, — all which combine to 
form a woman such that 

" The poor rude world 
Hath not her fellow." 

She is the graceful exponent of the highest value ; the symbol 
of true worth among the false and factitious ; the ideal of all that 
is best worth having, and which men strive to attain as the aim 
of their aspirations and the sum of their happiness. 

The original casket story was a religious allegory, but the dra- 
matist, in interweaving it as a part of his play with the old tale 
of the lady of Belmont, has given it a more worldly cast and an 
application quite different from that of the original story. Who 
and what is Portia ? 

" In Belmont is a lady richly left, 
And she is fair and fairer than that word 
Of wondrous virtues. . . . 
Her name is Portia, nothing undervalued 
To Cato's daughter, Brutus' Portia." 

The Roman Portia, daughter of Cato, wife of Brutus, the groat 
exemplar of woman's constancy, fortitude, and virtue, is adduced 
here as the type of the highest moral worth ; and the poet's Portia 
is "nothing undervalued" to her. But who deserves her? Who 
shall be accounted worthy of the highest reward that can be 
bestowed upon earthly merit through the possession of virtue, 
beauty, wisdom, wealth, and all the happiness they can bestow ? 
Her wise father had made provision that none can win her with- 
out desert. He had made her hand depend upon the right 



260 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 

choice of one of three caskets ; and, looking deep into moral 
causes and effects, he had so contrived the test of his daughter's 
suitors that none could make the right selection but one " who she 
should rightly love." Her renown has gone abroad throughout 
the world, and the most distinguished of the earth seek her man- 
sion at Belmont to try their fortunes for her hand. 

" Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth, 
For the four winds blow in from every coast 
Renowned suitors ; and her sunny locks 
Hang on her temples like a golden fleece 
Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos 9 strand, 
And many Jasons come in quest of her.' 9 

And again she is thus spoken of : — 

"From the four corners of the earth they come, 
To kiss this shrine, this mortal- breathing saint. 
The Hyrcanian deserts and the vasty wilds 
Of wide Arabia, are as through-fares now, 
For princes to come view fair Portia : 
The waCry kingdom, whose ambitious head 
Spits in the face of heaven, is no bar 
To stop the foreign spirits, but they come 
As o'er a brook, to see fair Portia." 

This is not a description of a lady merely, but of some para- 
gon of excellence or worth, which is the aim and object of all 
men's desires. 

And who are these " renowned suitors," these adventurous 
" Jasons " ? Setting aside those enumerated by Nerissa as worth- 
less shows, empty forms of men, absorbed in low and frivolous 
pursuits, with neither the courage nor the virtue nor the elevation 
of character to attempt to win the lady, we have, first, the noble 
and chivalric prince of Morocco. He is a famous warrior, and 
has so far a sense of true value that he asks to be judged not 
by his complexion, " the shadow'd livery of the burnish'd sun," 
but by his inward virtue, the redness of his blood, the symbol 
of courage and daring. There is about him a barbaric love of 
pomp and display, a swell and inflation of thought and expres- 
sion, characteristic of his Moorish origin. To his ostentatious 
and haughty temper gold appears the mark and appurtenance of 
rank and sovereignty, and we detect how really low is his stand- 
ard of excellence, how factitious his estimate of things in hjs 






THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 261 

disdain at the supposition that the lady of his love can be en- 
shrined in metal less worthy than gold. 

N " Is 't like that lead contains her ? " 

he asks, and answers his own question, — 

" 'T were damnation 

To think so base a thought. . . . 

Or shall I think in silver she 's immur'd 

Being ten times undervalued to tried gold f " 

He hopes to show himself worthy of the highest reward of true 
deserving by boasting of his valor, and recounting his exploits ; 
and swears by his scimitar, — 

" That slew the Sophi and a Persian prince 
That won three fields of Sultan Solyman, 
I would out-stare the sternest eyes that look, 
Pluck the young sucking cubs from the she-bear, 
Yea, mock the lion when he roars for prey, 
To win thee, lady." 

But when, in obedience to his moral instincts, he selects the 
golden casket, what does all this glory and renown, this ferocity 
and courage, prove to be worth ? " A carrion death," a skull 
whose empty eye contains a scroll with the pithy moral that " all 
that glisters is not gold," and teaching the great warrior that he 
had not deserved nor won the highest excellence when he had 
gained fame by his sword; that his "labor was lost," and he 
had mistaken the shadow for the substance. 

In the " moral " attached to the original story, we find this 
explanation : " By the first vessell of gold full of dead men's 
bones we shall understand some worldly men, both mighty men 
and rich, who outwardly shine in gold, in riches and pompes of 
the world ; neverthelesse within they be full of dead men's bones, 
that is, the works they have wrought in this world be dead in 
the sight of God." 

The next suitor is the prince of Arragon. He has no great- 
ness of heart, no warlike exploits to boast of, no chivalric ad- 
miration even for the lady. He is of a proud, cold, calculating 
temperament. He expects to make up by subtlety of brain what 
he lacks in warmth of heart. Too timid and selfish to hazard 
anything, he passes the threatening leaden casket at once ; at the 
same time he is too discerning to be caught by the glare of gold. 



262 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 

He leaves that to the u fool multitude," " the common spirits," 
with whom he scorns to be classed. Fond of compromise, like all 
men of his class, he takes the middle course and chooses the 
silver chest. And what wins he, this man so deep, so politic, so 
deserving in his own conceit? A fool's head, " the portrait of a 
blinking idiot." 

" Did I deserve no more than a fool's head ? " he querulously 
asks. Truly that is all that is merited by him who expects to 
compass love and virtue and happiness by a scheming brain and 
a cold heart. Well does the scroll inform him : — 

" Seven times tried that judgment is 
That did never judge amiss. 
Some there be that shadows kiss, 
Such have but a shadow's bliss," etc. 

Portia's comment places in an epigram the whole class to which 
Arragon belongs. 

" O these deliberate fools ! when they do choose, 
They have the wisdom by their wit to lose." 

The " moral " to the original story has this passage : " By the 
said vessell of silver, we ought to understand some justices and 
wise men of this world, which shine in fair speech," etc. It is ob- 
vious how much elegance and propriety the poet, while adhering 
to the purport of the allegory, has added to it. 

Next comes Bassanio, a soldier, a scholar, and a gentleman, with 
neither the ferocity of the conqueror nor the craft of the politician, 
but with honor, virtue, generosity, nobleness, and, above all, with a 
love of true worth and ability to discern it under any disguise. 
Undeceived by false glitter or false valuation and following the 
instincts of a true heart, he makes choice, inevitably, of the right 
casket and thus justifies the will of Portia's father and the com- 
ment of Nerissa upon it. 

"Your father was ever virtuous : and holy men have at their death good in- 
spirations ; therefore the lottery he hath devised in these three chests, of gold, 
silver, and lead (whereof who choose his meaning, chooses you) will, no doubt, 
never be chosen by any rightly, but one who you shall rightly love." 

Related to the sacrifice of the substance to the shadow is the 
neglect of the matter for the word. 

" The fool hath planted in his memory 
An army of good words, — and I do know 
A many fools, that stand in better place 
Garnished like him, that /br a tricksy word 
Defy the matter " 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 263 

Such is the comment of Lorenzo upon Launcelot's " quarreling 
with occasion " by " wit-snapping " and twisting the word away 
from the matter of the discourse, thus furnishing an illustration of 
a principle analogous to false valuation. This principle gives us 
the character of Gratiano, a gay, laughing, noisy youth, an inces- 
sant talker, who " speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than 
any man in all Venice. His reasons are two grains of wheat, hid 
in two bushels of chaff," etc. He has much good sense and much 
observation of life, but his fancy is so active, " his spirit so skip- 
ping," that in describing the plainest matter he pours out a flood 
of metaphor and imagery that almost overwhelms his thought and 
gives an air of extravagance to all he says. His character, gay, 
happy, and heedless, is a foil to the sad Antonio on the one side 
and to the deadly Jew on the other. His florid and diffuse rhet- 
oric is a fine contrast and relief to the plain, direct, incisive style 
of Shylock. 

But the neglect of the matter for the word is chiefly exemplified 
in good Launcelot Gobbo. Witness his soliloquy, in which he ar- 
gues the question between his conscience and the fiend as to the 
propriety of his running away from the Jew, — a burlesque pre- 
cursor of the motives that struggle in the mind of Jessica. 

" The fiend is at mine elbow and tempts me, saying ' Gobbo, Launcelot Gobbo, 
good Launcelot or good Gobbo or good Launcelot Gobbo, use your legs, take the 
start, run away ; ' My conscience says, No, take heed, honest Launcelot ; take 
heed, honest Gobbo ; or, as aforesaid, honest Launcelot Gobbo, do not run," etc. 

An amusing instance of the multiplication of words to the dark- 
ening of the matter is the scene in which Gobbo and his father 
solicit Bassanio for service. The whole matter is comprised in 
two words, but they contrive between them, while affecting great 
brevity, to expend nearly two hundred before they come to the 
point. 

" Gobbo. Here 's my son, sir, a poor boy — 

Laun. Not a poor boy, sir, but the rich Jew's man, that would, sir, as my 
father shall specify — 

Gobbo. He hath a great infection, sir, as one would say, to serve — 

Laun. Indeed, the short and the long is, I serve the Jew and have a desire, 
as my father shall specify — 

Gobbo. His master and he (saving your worship's reverence) are scarce 
cater-cousins. 

Laun. To be brief, the very truth is, that the Jew, having done me wrong, 
doth cause me, as my father, being I hope an old man, shall triitity (into you — 



264 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 

Gobbo. I have here a dish of doves, that I would bestow upon your worship, 
and ruy suit is — 

Lawn. In very brief, the suit is impertinent," etc. 

Bassanio, losing patience, at last interrupts them : — 

" One speak for both. What would you ? 
Laun. Serve you, sir." 

That is all, " serve you" but old Gobbo must needs add, — 
what the whole scene had proved, — " That 's the very defect of 
the matter, sir." 

What prejudice is in feeling and opinion, precedent frequently 
is in law, i. e. a prejudgment (proejiidiciwn) upon narrow and 
perhaps unanalogical grounds of a question which should be de- 
cided upon the broadest principles of tolerance and equity. This 
comedy illustrates these points in the most vivid manner ; repre- 
senting the world as made up of a variety of races, creeds, and 
nationalities, each with its predominant idiosyncrasies and affec- 
tions, which generate mutual hatreds and prejudices that con- 
stantly violate the broad humanity inculcated by the Christian 
exemplar. And in keeping with this style of characterization the 
dramatist introduces incidental sketches and examples of curi- 
ous antipathies or sympathies — as the case may be ; such, f«r in- 
stance, as Salarino's " strange fellow T s." 

" Some who will evermore peep through their eyes 
And laugh, like parrots, at a bag-piper ; 
And others of such vinegar aspect 
They will not shew their teeth in way of smile 
Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable." 

Of the same kind is Gratiano's description of "Sir Oracle" 
(Act I. Sc. 1), Portia's comments on the moral likeness, through 
force of sympathy, between Antonio and her husband (Act III. 
Sc. 4), as well as her sketch of "bragging Jacks" (Act III. 
Sc. 4) ; also Shylock's argument drawn from several curious 
cases of constitutional antipathies (Act IV. Sc. 1), Lorenzo's 
account of the power of music over the passions, the latent sym- 
pathy of our souls with the harmony of the spheres, together 
with his delineation of the unmusical man, whose " affections " are 
" dark as Erebus " (Act V. Sc. 1). Similar examples of strange 
biases of temper and mind are the characters of the suitors 
whom Nerissa enumerates (Act I. Sc. 2) and Portia describes. 
Among all these eccentricities Bassanio and Portia are the only 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 265 

ones who retain their justness of thought and moderation of senti- 
ment. 

The peculiar dispositions thus depicted, and others, which 
strongly affect the judgments of the characters are the source of 
those errors and false conclusions, which Bacon calls " idols ; " 
either of " the tribe," which proceed from an " infusion into the 
mind of the affections " (Nov. Org. Book I. Aph. 49), or of " the 
cave " '• which take their rise in the peculiar constitution, mental 
or bodily, of each individual" (Aph. 53), and of which he says 
" our spirits are included in the caves of our own complexions and 
customs, which minister unto us infinite errors and vain opin- 
ions " (Adv. p. 278). Particular instances of these need not be 
cited ; every scene of the piece illustrates them. 

The merchant lives in a world of ventures, and relies for suc- 
cess upon correctly calculating the probabilities of the future 
from experience and analogy. In this respect, however, the mer- 
chant is but the type of all other men, for all men build their 
hope of success upon the expectation that events will follow in the 
future as they have done in the past. All the characters of the 
piece are concerned with the hazards of the future, and endeavor 
to anticipate the issues of their actions by appeals to experience. 
This is notably the case with the suitors, while meditating upon a 
choice of the caskets ; their methods are exclusively inductive, and 
they seek to guide their judgments and justify their choice by 
their knowledge of the world and of similar cases; though, it 
may be observed, Morocco and Arragon are biased by their affec- 
tions, the one by his love of show, the other by conceit of his own 
discernment, while Bassanio, by inducting a number of instances 
to prove the deceptiveness of ornament, escapes the danger and 
wins the prize. 

Yet in this mode of reasoning there is always risk of the judg- 
ment being misled by false resemblances where no real analogy 
exists, or by overlooking a real similitude hidden by a wide dif- 
ference in unessential particulars. Out of these errors arise 
those mistaken judgments which, in forecasting the future, attrib- 
ute events to erroneous causes or to circumstances which are only 
concomitant of the real cause, as in the case of omens, dreams, 
and other superstitious prognostics. Even so practical a man as 
Shy lock fears the augury of a dream. He says, — 



266 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE* 

" There is some ill a-brewing towards my rest, 
For I did dream of money-bags to-night," etc. 

which case of false induction prompts Launcelot's parody, — 

" I will not say you shall see a masque ; but if you do, then it was not for 
nothing that my 'nose fell a-bleeding on Black Monday last at six o'clock in 
the morning, falling out that year on Ash- Wednesday was four year in the 
afternoon." 

By giving his characters this mental constitution, the poet makes 
his piece a repertory of instances of judgments and estimates 
founded on induction, both true and false ; and in fact it may be 
taken (though written and produced several years before Bacon 
had ever published any work on Philosophy) to illustrate Bacon's 
"Art of Judgment," as laid down in De Augmentis and Novum 
Organum. 

" The Art of Judgment," says Bacon, " handles the nature of 
proofs and demonstrations. In this art the conclusion is made 
either by induction or syllogism. For enthymemes and examples 
are but abridgments of these two." De Aug. Book V. ch. iv. 

Examples are of two sorts, real and invented. The real are 
drawn from actual matter of fact, such as historical events and 
persons, which may be pointed to as examples in some particular, 
as when Shylock affirms the excellence of Portia as a Judge, by 
exclaiming, — 

" A Daniel come to judgment, yea, a Daniel" 

The invented are fables and illustrations ; they are very similar 
in character, a fable being a short story in point ; and, when well 
known, a word or two suffices to introduce it ; as Portia, ordering 
the music to cease, gives a fanciful reason for it by an allusion to 
the fable of Endymion : — 

" Peace, ho ! the moon sleeps with Endymion 
And would not be awak'd ! " 

Illustrations, also, are allusions to well-known stories and per- 
sonages, particularly such as are representative, as the gods and 
goddesses of heathen mythology, each of whom is a pattern or 
representative of some quality or virtue or vice, and furnishes a 
standard of comparison, as in the phrase, " If I live to be old 
as Sybilla, I will die as chaste as Diana" etc. 

Under this head will fall metaphor and allusion, with which the 
piece abounds. 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 267 

Example, taken in its widest sense, comprehends the arguments 
called Induction, Experience, Analogy, Parity of Reasoning, 
" all of which," says Whateley, " are essentially the same, for in 
all arguments designated by these names it will be found that we 
consider one or more known individual objects or instances of a 
class as fair specimens in respect of some point or other of that 
class, and consequently draw an inference from them respecting 
the whole class or other less known individuals." 

Numerous ' instances of these arguments, both true and false, 
have already been given, but a few more will be cited in order to 
show how thoroughly inductive are the mental habits of the char- 
acters, and how completely the idea of an example is diffused 
through all parts of the play. 

The following argument proves from example the wisdom of 
following example : -*~ 

" In my school days, when I had lost one shaft, 
I shot his fellow of the self- same flight 
The self-same way, with more advised watch, 
To find the other forth ; and by adventuring both 
I oft found both ; I urge this childhood proof, 
Because what follows is pure innocence. 
I owe you much ; and, like a willful youth, 
That which I owe is lost ; but if you please 
To shoot another arrow that self-way 
Which you did shoot the first, I do not doubt, 
As I will watch the aim, or to find both, 
Or bring your latter hazard back again 
And thankfully rest debtor for the first." 

Act I. Sc. 1. 

Shy lock justifies his taking usury by the example of Jacob 
winning by artifice the increase of Laban's flock, as by another 
fraud he had cheated Esau out of his birthright, or, as Shylqck 
phrases it, " as his wise mother wrought in his behalf," on which 
false analogy Antonio justly observes : — 

" Mark you this, Bassanio ; 
The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose." 

During Bassanio's choice of the caskets, Portias excited feel- 
ings and vivid imagination find utterance in a passage made up 
of parable, metaphor, and illustration : — 

" Let music sound while he doth make his choioe ; 
Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end; 






268 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 

Fading in music. That the comparison 
May stand more just, my eye shall be the stream 
And watery death-bed for him. He may win - 
And what is music then ? then music is 
Even as the flourish when the subjects bow 
To a new-crowned, monarch ; such it is 
As are those dulcet sounds in break of day 
That creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear 
And summon him to marriage. Now he goes. 
With no less presence but with much more love 
Than young Alcides, when he did redeem 
The virgin-tribute paid by howling Troy 
To the sea-monster : I stand for sacrifice, 
The rest aloof are the Dardanian wives, 
With bleared visages, come forth to view 
The issue of the exploit. Go, Hercules ! 
Live thou, I live," etc. 

Act III. Sc. 2. 

A common form of error produced by " affection " is the judg- 
ing of the motives of others by our own feelings in like circum- 
stances. Shylock notes this : — 

" O Father Abraham ! what these Christians are ! 
Whose own hard dealings teaches them suspect 
The thoughts of others." 

Act I. Sc. 3. 

Morocco, lamenting that the choice of the casket is to be de- 
termined by fortune and not by merit, illustrates his meaning by 
an apt allusion to the story of Hercules and Lichas : — 

1 ' If Hercules and Lichas play at dice 
Which is the better man, the greater throw 
May turn by fortune from the weaker hand ; 
So is Alcides beaten by his page," etc. 

Act II. Sc. 1. 

Portia infers a similarity and proportion, both physical and 
mental, between Antonio and Bassanio, from their mutual love : — 

" For in companions 
That do converse and waste the time together, 
Whose souls do bear an equal yoke of love, 
There must needs be a like proportion 
Of lineaments, of manners, and of spirit ; 
Which makes me think that this Antonio, 
Being the bosom-lover of my lord, 
Must needs be like my lord,'' etc. 

Act III. Sc. 4. 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 269 

Antonio cites the following analogous cases to show the use- 
lessness of appealing to Shylock for mercy : — 

" You may as well go stand upon the beach, 
And bid the main flood 'bate his usual height ; 
You may as well use question with the wolf 
Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb ; 
You may as well forbid the mountain-pines 
To wag their high tops and to make no noise 
When they are fretted with the gusts of heaven ; 
You may as well do anything most hard 
As seek to soften that (than which what 's harder) 
His Jewish heart." 

Act IV. Sc. 1. 

The foregoing specimens are, probably, sufficient to show how 
the style of the piece # is moulded by example. 

All of Shylock's reasoning is drawn from illustrations and 
examples, but most of them are instances of false analogies. 

Most critics have remarked upon the rich poetic coloring this 
play possesses, but it is apparent that this is owing to the poet's 
fidelity to his " idea," which requires a profuse exhibition of 
similitude and illustration. 

In accordance, moreover, with the idea of a story that is taken 
as a text to illustrate a moral doctrine, the personages of the piece 
habitually moralize and preach, so to speak, upon events and the 
persons around them. Thus Gratiano, marking Antonio's sad- 
ness, reads him a lecture upon the folly of affecting gravity in 
order to obtain a reputation for wisdom, a bit of advice of which 
the levity is rather enhanced than otherwise by a Scriptural -allu- 
sion : — 

" O my Antonio, I do know of those 
That, therefore, only are reputed wise 
For saying nothing ; who, I am very sure, 
If they should speak, would almost damn those ears, 
Which, hearing them, would call their brothers fools." 

Act I. Sc. 1. 

Gratiano himself calls his remarks "an exhortation" Of a 
like kind is Bassanio's reproval of Gratiano for " being too wild, 
too rude, and bold of voice," and Gratiano's promise to amend 
and affect the behavior of one religiously inclined. 

" Grat, If I do not put on a sober habit. 
Talk with respect, and swear but now and then ; 
Wear prayer-books in my pocket ; look demurely ; 



270 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 

Nay, more, while grace is saying, hood mine eyes 

Thus with my hat and sigh, and say amen ; 

Use all the observance of civility, 

Like one well-studied in a sad ostent 

To please his grandam, never trust me more." 

Act II. Sc. 2. 

Another instance is Lorenzo's remarks on music, concluding 
with the well-known moral : — 

" The man that hath no music in his soul," etc. 

Act V. Sc. 1. 

The caskets also contain scrolls with pithy morals on the folly 
of the choosers. And other instances might be cited. Even the 
jokes of the play have a Scriptural and doctrinal turn ; as Gobbo's 
argument that Jessica is damned because the sins of the father 
are visited upon the children ; or his debate between his con- 
science and the fiend whether he shall run away from his master 
the Jew, who is " the very devil incarnation." 

In all this the poet maintains the nicest balance between the 
moralizing feature of the old stories and a dramatic style, making 
the note of moral and religious sentiment just prominent enough 
to accord with the idea of an illustrative example, without trench- 
ing too far upon the dramatic requirements of the play. 

These moral reflections heighten also the effect of the gay and 
light-hearted manners of the youthful personages of the piece, 
as they indicate in them a recognition of the deeper and more 
serious side of life. 

But may it not be conjectured that in the same way that the 
story on which the play is founded has a "moral" appended to 
it, the play also has one to which the fortunes of the characters 
have a direct and distinct reference. All critics agree that the 
action of the piece terminates with the fourth act, the catastrophe 
of the play being the defeat of the Jew through his want of 
"human gentleness and love." The interest of the story ends 
there, and the fifth act is without action and is taken up only 
with the reunion of Portia and Bassanio at Belmont, which in 
itself has no dramatic interest and follows as a matter of course ; 
for the matrimonial fate of Portia had been decided before the 
trial of the question on the bond was brought forward, and it is 
this latter which gives the piece its overwhelming interest ; when 
this is ended, the piece is ended. What, then, justifies the fifth 



> 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 271 

act ? Is it not the adherence of the poet to the literary " form " 
on which he works, namely, of a story, like those of the Gesta 
Romanorum, to which a moral is appended ? But as the story 
itself is made dramatic, so also must the " moral " be represented 
in life and action. The story we have seen inculcates love and 
kindness in human intercourse ; the " moral," then, will exhibit 
the happy effect of these emotions in practice. 

The scene is appropriate ; it is Belmont, the ideal of an elegant 
and refined abode. The moon shines bright, " making the night 
a paler day," which by its fitness for all sweet thoughts and mem- 
ories suggests to the lovers that stray in the garden-paths many a 
story of love that had bechanced on " such a night " (and ob- 
serve that these stories are examples which, while in keeping with 
the idea of the piece and thus preserving its unity, have an effect 
like a change of key after the stormy passions of the fourth act), 
"Music creeps in at the ears " sounding doubly sweet, for 
" Soft stillness and the night 
Become the touches of sweet harmony," 

and awakening that full feeling which lifts the thoughts above the 
earth " to the orbs that in their motion sing," and to " the har- 
mony that is in immortal souls." Portia enters and adds to so 
much that is delightful to the sense, the sentiment of benignity 
and love that are associated with the errand of mercy from which 
she returns. Her presence lends a moral beauty to the beauty 
of the night, and her graceful mind imparts a new charm to the 
music and a fresh lustre to the moonlight by associating them 
with thoughts which give them human sympathy and interest. 
Antonio, happy in his rescue from the Jew, and Bassanio, doubly 
happy in his friend and his wife, are present to swell the full tide 
of joyful emotion. Everything is accordant, time, place, persons, 
and occasion. 

But to enliven this monotone and give some dramatic interest 
to the closing scene, there follows the pleasant banter of their 
husbands by Portia and Nerissa, for giving away the rings they 
had sworn to keep (a final illustration of the higher law of grati- 
tude and love overriding the letter of the promise), the affected 
displeasure of the wives serving but to prepare the way for in- 
creased happiness and greater mirth when the explanation ensues. 
And thus this delightful comedy closes with a full chord of joy, 
congratulation, and love. 



) 



272 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 

The fifth act, therefore, which is without dramatic action, and, 
though comic in matter, is ethical in tone, may very well be as- 
sumed as "the moral" of the plot. 

Thus viewed on its artistic and moral side, the play is clearly a 
piece modeled upon the idea of a story designed as an example 
or lesson in life ; but viewed also on its intellectual side, that is, 
with respect to the intellectual and logical qualities of its person- 
ages, it bears a striking analogy to those exemplaria which Bacon 
projected as illustrations of his Inductive Method. It is a " Table 
of Enquiry " in action. 

To set forth his method by examples, or what he calls " Tables 
of Enquiry and Invention," was a purpose long meditated by 
Bacon. He speaks of it in his Cogitata et Visa (1609) : — 

" After deep and long meditation," he says, " it appeared to 
him especially advisable that Tables of Discovery or formulas of 
a legitimate enquiry — that is, the mass of particulars pertinent to 
certain subjects arranged so that the intellect can readily operate 
upon them — should be set forth by way of example or visible 
description, as it were, of the work. 1 " 

Afterwards, in 1622, in a letter to Bishop Andrews, he says, 
alluding to his Novum Organum, " I have just cause to doubt 
that it flies too high over men's heads. I have a purpose, there- 
fore (though it break the order of time), to draw it down to the 
sense by some Pattern of a Natural Story and Inquisition ; " and 
in the Latin translation he adds the words " quod etiam ex parte 
feci" L e., he had already done it ; and may possibly have done 
it as early as the date of The Merchant of Venice? 

These Tables, or Patterns, are assigned in " The Plan of the 
Work" to the fourth and fifth parts of the Instauration, the 
former comprising those exemplaria which exhibited the true and 
legitimate method of Induction, and are thus described : — 

" Examples of Inquiry and invention according to my method, 
exhibited by anticipation in some particular subjects ; choosing 
such subjects as are at once the most noble in themselves among 

1 " Atque diu et acriter rem cogitanti et perpendenti ante omnia visum est ei 
Tabulas Inveniendi sive legitimae Inquisitionis formulas (hoc est, materiem particu- 
larium ad opus intellectus ordinatam) in aliquibus subjectis proponi tanquam ad 
exemplum et operis descriptionem fere visibilem." 

2 This letter shows that the example of an inquiry into the nature of heat, in the 
Second Book of the Novum Organum. is not altogether such a pattern of a Story and 
Inquisition as is here alluded to. 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 273 

those under inquiry and most different one from another; that 
there may be an example in every kind. I do not speak of those 
examples which are joined to the several precepts and rules by 
way of illustration (for of these I have given plenty in the second 
part of the work), but I mean actual types and models, by which 
the entire process of the mind and the whole fabric and order of 
invention from the beginning to the end, in certain subjects and 
those various and remarkable, should be set, as it were, before 
the eyes. For I remember that in the mathematics it is easy to 
follow the demonstration when you have a machine beside you, 
whereas without that help all appears involved and more subtle 
than it really is. To examples of this kind, the fourth part of 
the work is devoted." 

It is believed that the play of Cymheline is a dramatic imita- 
tion of a pattern of this kind, showing the true and legitimate 
method of induction by exclusions and rejections. 

The examples comprised in the fifth part were, no doubt, of 
the same nature so far as relates to subjects of inquiry and 
method of exemplifying by " placing actual types and models 
under the eyes," but they differed in that the inquisition did not 
proceed according to the strict formula of scientific induction (as 
laid down in the Novum Organuni), but trusted to that induc- 
tion which the unaided powers of the mind makes when freed 
by caution and vigilance from impediment and error. 

He says : " I include in this fifth part such things as I have 
myself discovered, proved, or added, — not, however, according to 
the true rules and methods of interpretation, but by the ordinary 
use of the understanding in inquiring and discovering." 

And in the Novum Organum, Book I. Aph. 116, he says: 
" On some special subjects and in an incomplete form I am in 
possession of results which I take to be far more true and more 
certain and withal more fruitful than those now received, and 
these I have collected into the fifth part of my Instau ration." 

From this it is apparent that at the time of writing the Novum 
Organum he had collected and prepared the examples that were 
to constitute the fifth part of his work; yet they never, as such, 
have been published. 

It has been repeatedly stated that Bacon's method was as appli- 
cable to moral and intellectual subjects as to physical. Nov. Org 
Book I. Aph. 127. 
18 



274 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 



A Table of Inquiry is made by collecting and arranging a suf- 
ficient number of instances of the subject under investigation, in 
such manner as to facilitate their examination and comparison, 
and so lead the mind to a sound conclusion ; but in a dramatic 
imitation of such a table, which must be generic in order that it 
may be an exemplar which will suit all cases, the topic of inquiry 
must be virtually the judgment itself, and exhibit it as led to 
either truth or error as it is guided by proof and induction on the 
one side or by passion and prejudice on the other. 

To convert a play into an exemplar of this nature, it will be 
necessary to incorporate the chief characteristics of a Table of 
Inquiry into the movement, action, and dialogue of the piece. 
The dramatis persona?, will be animated by a spirit of inquiry, 
and will have some definite object of which they are in quest and 
about which they will be greatly concerned in coming to a sound 
conclusion ; they will be guided in their reasoning by induction, 
by examples and similar cases cited as proofs and authorities, and 
having validity in proportion to their being founded on true or 
false analogies ; in the one case, leading to truth and success ; in 
the other, to error and failure. 

The play is The Merchant of Venice, and, as the business of a 
merchant is the quest of value (X. qucestus), the subject of the 
play is the quest or inquiry of that which has the truest value 
and men should consider the greatest gain ; and as all valuations 
are judgments, such an inquiry involves one respecting the correct 
exercise of the judgment. 

Without detailing the numerous instances, in which the notions 
of quest, inquiry, question, seeking, searching, interrogating and 
the like are introduced into the incidents and dialogue, — espe- 
cially apparent in the all-important question on the bond, — it 
is sufficient to point out that the prominent characters of the 
leading story (for the bond story is but incidental to that of the 
caskets) are suitors, who, like Jasons in search of the fleece, go 
in quest of Portia (typical of a search for the highest value), and 
are especially concerned in making a right judgment in their 
choice of the caskets ; Portia, moreover, is won or lost as they 
respectively prize moral or material values. And so with the 
others ; Shylock's love of money through avarice, and Antonio's 
love of riches through a spirit of munificence, are both gross over- 
valuations of what is purely factitious ; Lorenzo, Jessica, even 






THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 275 

Gobbo, are all in quest of some object, to which their desires attach 
a value that in their judgment outweighs duty ; while the most 
striking cases in the piece of false valuations, in which the essential 
is habitually sacrificed to the superficial, grow out of the mutual 
hate and prejudice of Jew and Christian, which color the senti- 
ments, furnish the motives, and affect the fortunes of all the per- 
sonages of the piece, with the exception of Bassanio and Portia, 
with whom material or factitious values are of no estimation by 
the side of moral worth. 

And the play, therefore, contains a collection of instances of 
valuation, that is, of judgments on the value of men and things, 
which, according as they are true or false, are attended by happi- 
ness or by disappointment ; and, taken as a whole, it is an exem- 
plar of a Table of Inquiry, presented in living and speaking 
images, who, in quest of value, exhibit a correct or incorrect exer- 
cise of judgment, respectively choosing the substantial or the fac- 
titious as they are guided by proof or perverted by prejudice ; on 
which whole array and presentation (like Bacon's " mater iem par- 
ticularium ad opus intellectus ordinatam "), the mind is led to 
the " easy and spontaneous " conclusion x that the highest worth 
and most precious object of men's desires are truth and love, of 
which, in keeping with the allegory which is the source of the 
play, Portia is the outward visible representative. 

And thus we see with what marvelous skill the artistic, dra- 
matic, moral, philosophical, and poetic sides of the piece are 
made to " cluster and concur " in one total effect. 

The happiness that follows the acquisition of the highest worth 

is thus described : — 

" It is very meet 
The lord Bassanio lead an upright life, 
For having such a blessing in his lady 
He finds the joys of heaven here on earth, 
And if on earth he does not mean it, it 
Is reason he shonld never come to heaven. 
Why, if two gods should play some heavenly match, 
And on the wager lay two earthly women, 
And Portia one, there must be something else 
Pawn'd with the other ; for the poor rude world 
Hath not her fellow." 

1 " Interpretationem facilem jam et sponte sequcntem, imomento fore piwrep- 
tam." Sententice, xii. 10. 



ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

The constructive law, or to use the Baconian term, "the form " 
of this Comedy, seems to have been drawn from a class of writings 
which are, perhaps, best exemplified in " Books of Proverbs," 
and of which the essential nature lies in their being counsels for 
the regulation of conduct or rules of practice. Writings, however, 
of which the essential idea is a rule of action, must draw their 
matter from the practical side of life, which is occupied with 
works and tasks for the accomplishment of which directions and 
methods are indispensable ; in such a world the discovery of a 
rule or rules for operating a desired effect is the one thing need- 
ful, and this is exampled with more or less pertinency in the 
methods, good or bad, with which men strive to attain their pur- 
poses. 

The most famous collection of rules of conduct is, no doubt, 
the Proverbs, or as they were sometimes called in Shakespeare's 
day, the Parables 1 of Solomon. Bacon so styles them and wrote 
interpretations of many of them. With him, for instance, the 
saying, " a soft answer turneth away wrath," is a parable ; whence 
it would appear that he would apply the term to any wise saw or 
sententious proposition teaching a rule of action ; and, no doubt, 
would have considered even the title of this comedy " All 's Well 
that ends Well" a parable. 

In ordinary parlance, a parable is a story which, in addition to 
the obvious meaning which it carries on its face, has a veiled or 
hidden meaning which is typified or imaged by what is repre- 
sented. 

There is ground for supposing this play a parable which wraps 
up in its letter an example of the application of Science to prac- 
tical life, and also the more prominent features of Bacon's philo- 
sophical process. Of this process the aim and intent was to 

1 " The word parable is sometimes used in Scripture in a large and general sense, 
and applied to short sententious sayings, maxims, or aphorisms, expressed in a figura- 
tive, proverbial, or even poetical manner." Porteus 1 Lectures. 



ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 277 

furnish helps to the mind in order to enable it to form a correct 
judgment ; and the two leading characters of the piece, Helen 
and Bertram, are supposed to exhibit respectively the correct and 
incorrect exercise of that faculty. 

The pith and marrow of Natural Philosophy is to discover the 
cause or " true difference " of things, or, as the Novum Organum 
(Book II. Aph. 1) has it, " Of a given nature to discover the 
form or true difference . . . is the work or aim of Human 
Knowledge." This is to discover the cause why a thing is what 
it is, and such discovery when made and expressed in words is an 
axiom for the production of the effect, and consequently a perfect 
rule of practice. A knowledge of the " true difference " is equiv- 
alent to that of the essential nature of a thing, for, in Hudibrastic 
phrase, it is 

" To know what 's what, and that 's as high 
As metaphysic wit can fly." 

It therefore determines the practical worth and use of a thing 
— or of a man. 

This is represented in the play in characters and incidents 
that illustrate the discovery of men's real differences or essential 
natures, whereby are established their worth and efficiency, and 
their true titles to distinction. 

The plot is suggested by a story of Boccaccio, but a large part 
of the play and the greater number of the dramatis personce are 
of Shakespeare's own invention. The main incidents are the 
following : — 

A Count of Rousillon, one of the great vassals of the King of 
France, dies leaving a widow and a son, Bertram, the heir to his 
title and estate. The Count had been attended by his physician, 
Gerard de Narbon, a man famous in his profession, but whose 
skill, great as it was, did not suffice to save the Count's life nor 
his own, for he too dies, leaving a daughter, Helen, to the care of 
the Countess. He also bequeathed to Helen certain receipts and 
remedies of rare value, which were the best fruits of his profes- 
sional experience. 

Helen had been reared in the family of the Count, and had 
conceived an intense love for Bertram, but this was a secret 
known only to her own heart. 

The King is afflicted with a disease supposed to be incurable ; 
nevertheless, being the feudal guardian of Bertram, he sends to 



278 ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

him an old courtier, Lafeu, with a command that he attend him 
at Court ; whereupon Bertram leaves Rousillon for Paris. After 
his departure, Helen, in order to be near him, and also in the 
hope of possibly winning his hand, forms a plan of visiting Paris 
and offering her services to the King for the cure of his disease, 
— an undertaking not so extravagant as at the first glance it 
appears, — for among the remedies left her by her father, there 
is one especially suited to the King's case, and on its efficacy she 
is willing to stake even her life, In return, however, she demands 
that in case she restores the King to health, she shall have in 
marriage any one of the King's wards she may select ; for by 
feudal law, the wards of the King were at his disposal in mar- 
riage. 

Her plan succeeds ; she restores the King to health, and, of 
course, selects Bertram as her husband ; he at first revolts against 
marrying a physician's daughter as utterly derogatory to his rank, 
but under the threats of the King he gives her his hand ; yet 
immediately after the nuptials he repudiates her and flies to 
Florence, where he takes service in the army of the Duke ; he 
also sends a letter to Helen, in which he informs her that until 
she has performed certain apparently impossible conditions, he 
will not recognize her as a wife, and declares that " until he has 
no wife, he has nothing in France." 

Helen, finding that she has driven him from his home and 
exposed him to the dangers of war, resolves to sacrifice all her 
own wishes to his welfare and betake herself to a religious house, 
for which purpose she enters on a pilgrimage to St. Jacques le 
Grand. Her route lies through Florence (whither she is also 
probably led by the hope of hearing something of Bertram), and 
there she learns that, although greatly distinguished as a soldier, 
he has, under the instigation of a corrupt companion, Parolles, 
entered on a profligate life, and is even then making dishonorable 
proposals to a young gentlewoman, named Diana Capulet, to 
whom he has promised marriage after the death of his wife. 
Having enlisted Diana and her mother in her service, Helen so 
manages that the Count's passion for Diana becomes the means 
of effecting the performance of the conditions on which he was 
to acknowledge her as a wife. She then spreads reports of her 
own death so skillfully as to induce the Count to return to Rousil- 
lon, whither she, together with Diana and her mother, follows 



ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 279 

him. Diana gains access to the King, and accuses Bertram of 
having violated his promise to marry her ; Bertram attempts to 
repel the charge, but the proofs make it clear that he is guilty, 
at which point Diana herself most unaccountably exculpates 
him, declaring that he has never wronged her, yet as stoutly 
asserting that he is guilty, thus wrapping the whole matter in 
mystery, of which there seems to be no explanation, until Helen, 
who has been mourned as dead, is brought in by Widow Capulet, 
and it becomes manifest that all of Diana's double meanings and 
contradictions grow out of the fact that Helen, in the guise of 
Diana, has secretly been the chief actor in the scheme, and that 
with Diana's collusion, she has performed the condition on which 
Bertram was to take her as a wife. Bertram, happy to escape 
the consequences of his course towards Diana, willingly receives 
Helen, and promises all the amends in his power. 

This is one of those improbable and romantic fables in which 
Boccaccio delighted, and which, as he handles them, are made 
exponents of the power of love to inspire an industry and perse- 
verance that can overcome all impediments. Shakespeare does 
not lose sight of the moral beauty shining through the strange 
and, in some respects, disagreeable incidents of the story, but he 
enlarges the plot, and makes it a vehicle of the philosophy of 
practical life, besides converting it into a parable which, whether 
intended for the purpose or not, exemplifies the prominent traits 
in Bacon's method of discovering the " true difference." In the 
following remarks, the play will be treated as a work of art, and 
also as a philosophical paradigm without keeping the two entirely 
distinct ; in other words, it will be interpreted as a work of art 
in the light of the Baconian philosophy. 

The proverb " All 's well that ends well " is capable of various 
constructions ; in one sense, it implies that final success will com- 
pensate for previous disaster ; in another sense, it may mean that 
success will gild and palliate the means, however questionable, 
used to attain it. Through fear of such a result, Bacon doubts 
whether young men are fit auditors of matters of policy, at least 
until " they have been thoroughly seasoned in religion, morality, 
and duty, lest their judgments be corrupted, and made apt to think 
that there are no true and real differences of things, but (/// 
things are to be measured by utility and fortune, as b the poet 
says, — 



280 ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

* Prosperum et f elix scelus virtus vocatur,' — 
and again, — 

' Ille cruceni pretium sceleris tulit, hie diadema,' — 

which the poets speak satirically and in indignation, but some books 
of policy seriously and positively." De Aug. Book VII. ch. iii. 

Still, the maxim has its more moral side, and will apply, for 
instance, to the reformation of a youth who has been drawn into 
evil courses, but who afterwards makes amendment and repara- 
tion ; but perhaps its greatest use as a rule of action, whether 
moral or politic, is in its being a spur to industry and persever- 
ance ; and, no doubt, it has frequently led to success in the face 
of the most discouraging obstacles. In this sense, it is particu- 
larly apposite as a title to this drama. 

Notwithstanding its comic incidents, the piece has a serious tone ; 
an elegiac note is struck in the opening scene, where the mortal- 
ity of man and the inevitable triumph of the grave are put be- 
fore us in the lamentations of the Countess Rousillon and others 
over the death of her husband and of his physician, Gerard de Nar- 
bon, of the latter of whom it is said, " He was skillful enough to 
have lived still, if knowledge could be set up against mortality." 
The aspect of man's life from the point of view here taken is that 
of a being frail and corruptible, both in body and mind, the one 
being subject to disease and pain, and the other to error and 
passion, against which, in either case, there is no safeguard but 
Science, physical and moral. Helps and remedies are required to 
supply his deficiencies and correct his errors, and, in general, to 
aid his weakness. His wants are the source of innumerable de- 
sires, that urge him on to the incessant pursuit of some good that 
will improve his condition, — 

" That something still that prompts the eternal sigh " — 

yet desires are not always motives to the will, for often they are 
clearly impracticable, in which case they become mere wishes, which 
a well-regulated mind drops at once ; they are fancies suggested 
by passing emotions ; still, many things which are simply strange 
are taken to be impossible, and one of the best tests of genius and 
judgment is the ability to discern the mode of doing that on safe 
grounds which to the world at large seems utterly hopeless. 

Wishes and desires, when out of our own reach, prompt en- 
treaties and prayers to those who have the ability to aid us, and 



ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 281 

out of the same need of help arise the arts of policy, through 
which men seek to gain the grace and favor of others, especially 
of superiors. With the great and powerful, again, desires are 
expressed as " wills " and " pleasures " which are equivalent to 
commands. Under the influence of memory, desires become re- 
grets for the past, the lost and irretrievable, and penitence for 
misconduct is but an earnest wish that our conduct had been dif- 
ferent. The hope and desire of immortality springs from our 
sense of the weakness and brevity of life, and men aspire to live 
in their deeds, even if they lift not their minds to a higher exist- 
ence. In short, desires, hopes, and wishes are ever in the hearts 
and on the tongues of men, and so incessant is this flow of emotion 
that it fills ordinary discourse with familiar phrases and exclama- 
tions, like those with which this play abounds, as " Would for the 
king's sake he were living," " I had rather be in this choice than 
throw ames-ace for my life," "I would I had that corporal 
soundness now," etc., or the Countess's exclamation on the be- 
trothment of Bertram and Lafeu's daughter : — 

" Which better than the first dear heaven bless, 
Or ere they meet, in me, Nature cease." 

Act V. Sc. 3. 

But the pursuit of wishes and desires, whether for the real or 
the apparent good, makes up the business of life, and the play, 
therefore, presents us with the world of affairs, — not dealing, 
however, with mercantile transactions or money-making, — but 
with the effecting of physical and moral results, that can be ac- 
complished only by Science and Policy. 

All business is the practical operation of some process for 
effecting an end ; it is the application of a cause or rule of prac- 
tice. Being done in successive steps, it is & proceeding or process 
which should constantly draw nearer to the end proposed and ter- 
minate in a success ; in Shakespearian language, success denotes 
an issue, whether favorable or not, yet it is generally equivalent 
to prosperity, a word which etymologists say is derived from pro 
spe, i. e. according to hopes and wishes. 

Though the term " business " is generally restricted to transac- 
tions that look to material profit and advantage, it really covers 
the whole conduct of life which must be governed by reason and 
judgment in order to attain success, which in the moral world is 



282 ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

the formation of a high and noble character, and is the most im- 
portant task that man has to perform. This result is certain if 
sincerely and wisely pursued, whereas material success is the sport 
of Fortune. 

There is always some one way of doing a thing better than any 
other, which better way will constitute a rule of practice, whether 
in the moral or the physical world. Hence the necessity of begin- 
ners asking advice and obtaining knowledge of the more experi- 
enced; good counsel always points to the wise way of doing a 
thing, and whatever its form, whether maxim, proverb, precept, 
parable, or what not, it is always educational and instructive and 
lays down a rule for guidance. 

Good counsel proceeds from a knowledge of cause and conse- 
quence ; and a book of precepts or rules of practice in the moral 
world is essentially the same as in the physical ; it is made up of 
axioms for the application of causes in order to produce effects ; 
as Bacon says, " Axioms when discovered, supply practice with 
its instruments." Nov. Org. Book I. Aph. 70. 

In all affairs men need help, and to gain this is one of the 
ends of society. " For there are," says Bacon, treating of Civil 
Knowledge (De Aug. Book VIII. ch. i.), " three kinds of good, 
which men seek in Society: Comfort against solitude; Assist- 
ance in Business ; and Protection against injuries." 

Of these, "Assistance in Business " gives rise to the doctrine,, 
which he styles " Negotiation or Wisdom in Business" under 
which falls the formation of methods and rules, which have regard 
to the advancement of one's fortune and are politic rather than 
moral. 

This was a subject of which Bacon was preeminently a master, 
and on which he discourses always with depth and originality. 

In The Advancement he says : " For the wisdom of Business 
wherein man's life is most conversant, there be no books of it, 
except some few scattered advertisements that have no proportion 
to the magnitude of the subject. ... Of this Wisdom, it seemeth 
some of the ancient Romans in the saddest and wisest times were 
professors, for Cicero reporteth that it was then in use for sena- 
tors of name and opinion for general wise men, as Coruncanius, 
Curius, Laelius, and many others, to walk at certain hours in 
the Place and to give audience to those that would use their 
advice, and that the particular citizens would resort unto them 



ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 283 

and consult with them of the marriage of a daughter, or the em- 
ploying of a son, or of a purchase or bargain, or of an accusation 
and every other occasion incident to mans life ; so as there is a 
wisdom of counsel and advice even in private cases arising out of 
an universal insight into the affairs of the world." 

The Wisdom of Business, then, is equivalent to that knowledge 
of human affairs derived from the wide experience that lies at the 
bottom of all wise counsel respecting the management of all the 
transactions of life. 

Bacon then refers to the Proverbs (which he calls indifferently 
proverbs, parables, and aphorisms) of Solomon as an incompar- 
able collection of rules and precepts, containing besides those of 
a theological character many civil precepts and cautions, and 
further adds, " that it was generally to be found in the wisdom 
of the more ancient times, that as men found out any observation 
that they thought was good for life, they would gather it and 
express it in parable or aphorism or fable" 

But besides the wisdom of imparting counsel, there is also wis- 
dom for one's self, or the art of advancing one's fortunes. This 
includes many good and some evil arts, all of which, however, fall 
under the head of Policy. 

From the foregoing passages cited from Bacon, it is evident 
that under the head of Business he comprehended the whole con- 
duct of life, and that for its management rules of morality, of 
prudence, and policy were alike indispensable. 

On this subject, also, he would have books written, and of these 
he himself left some noted specimens ; for instance, this same 
Book VIII. of De Augmentis, with its precepts of policy and 
explanations of the Parables of Solomon ; also his a Counsels and 
Essays, Civil and Moral," of which he remarks that " they come 
home to men's business and bosoms," being composed in fact of 
that very knowledge of life and affairs which he terms the Wis- 
dom of Business ; witness his Essay on Cunning or on Negotia- 
tion, or Dissimulation or Wisdom for one's Self which, to all 
intents, are tables of rules and cautions and advice, both moral 
and politic, for guidance in the affairs of life. 

But in all works of this nature, whatever their form, whether 
they be counsels for particular transactions or rules of morality 
or maxims of policy or axioms of science, there would be one idea 
common to all ; they all (as has been said of good counsel) would 



H 



284 ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

aim at giving instruction for action, or, in other words, they would 
be a collection of rules of practice ; and a set of such rules for 
the accomplishment of some particular end would be a Process or 
method of proceeding. 

It will be seen further on, that on the active side of Philosophy 
the chief step in Bacon's Process is the formation of a Table of 
Rules of Practice. 

Although at the time All 's Well, etc. was produced (which if 
it be the same play mentioned by Meres as Loves Labour Won, 
must have been previous to 1598) Shakespeare could not have 
been acquainted with any work of the kind suggested by Bacon 
(unless perchance it may have been Bacon's own book of Coun- 
sels and Essays, produced 1597), yet this comedy seems to have 
been constructed on " the form " or idea that underlies such 
works ; for, setting aside the fact that the theme is the conduct of 
life, and that the whole dialogue is steeped in morality, the char- 
acters have their special projects and ends, requiring wisdom and 
counsel to carry to a successful issue ; and a j> rocess or method 
of proceeding is involved in the action of the piece, of which the 
interest wholly lies in the conduct or moral progress of the two 
principal characters, a pair of young persons just starting in the 
world, one of whom, Helena, after curing the King by the applica- 
tion of a " rule of practice," still has before her the accomplish- 
ment of most difficult tasks, both physical and moral, which, how- 
ever, by observing the precepts of a wise policy, she carries 
through to a full completion, while the other, Bertram, through 
the selection of bad ends and improper means, falls into disgrace 
and well-nigh irretrievable ruin. 

The personages of the piece also advise and warn each other, 
as occasions arise, respecting conduct or associates ; and to render 
the picture more natural, they fall into groups respectively of age 
and youth, of which the first consists of the Countess, Lafeu, the 
King, the Duke, Widow Capulet, and Mariana, — all of whom 
are advanced in life, and whose business in the play is, for the 
most part, to give counsel and cautions to their younger com- 
panions, while, on the other hand, the youthful group contains 
the two French lords, Bertram and Diana, of whom the two latter 
are special objects of admonition. With the elder group may 
be placed Parolles, who is Bertram's trusted adviser, and who 
gives Helen and Diana many politic precepts, but all of them 



ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 285 

corrupt ; while Helen — too young in years to be placed with the 
elderly characters, yet too wise to be classed with the younger 
ones — is her own counselor, being herself a model of self-gov- 
ernment, and needing no guide but her own judgment for the 
attainment of her ends. 

It seems, therefore, that this play adheres strictly in its con- 
struction to the Shakespearian method, its " form " being taken 
from a class of writings which contain counsels and precepts for 
the conduct of life, of which " books of proverbs" may be con- 
sidered as a type ; and the matter of these writings being drawn 
from the practical side of life, the play presents a world of affairs, 
in which the action of the characters is avowedly the performance 
of tasks of great difficulty, for the successful completion of which 
are required, as means, wise rules of proceeding ; and these, and 
similar means and rules, when matured by experience and digested 
into systems, become branches of learning, or Morality and Pol- 
icy ; which latter includes the Wisdom of Business, or that doc- 
trine which appertains to " Assistance or Helps in the Affairs of 
Life," which, according to Bacon, is one of the three kinds of 
good which men seek in society. This doctrine of Wisdom of 
Business is copiously illustrated throughout the piece. 

Men help each other from various motives, — duty, courtesy, 
love, or hire ; and so universal is the need of aid that the rela- 
tions of society, all of which involve rights and duties, resolve 
themselves into the common one of master and servant. Human 
intercourse is an exchange of services on a basis of equivalence. 
Service should be rewarded according to its worth ; as Helen 

says, — 

" Not helping, death 's my fee ; 
But if I help, what do you promise me ? " 

Praise, honor, thanks, gratitude, or more material rewards 
should be proportionate to the deed. Civil society depends upon 
ministrations and offices, of which the dignity and emoluments 
are supposed to be commensurate with the skill and integrity 
required to discharge them ; and in feudal times this need of 
mutual aid was made the basis of property in land and of rank 
in the State, the king dividing the territory of the realm into vast 
feuds, and bestowing them, with titles, on his ablest leaders as a 
stipend for their services; and they, in turn, subdividing their 
domains into lesser feuds, which they distributed among their 



286 ALL'S WELL THAT EXDS WELL. 

immediate followers on like conditions, and so on down to the 
poor serf who was allowed his hut and patch of land on certain 
menial services to be rendered. The king and supreme lords 
held in ward the persons and estates of the minor heirs of their 
tenants, with the right of disposing of their hands in marriage ; 
and it is on this feature of feudal law that the plot of the play is 
made to turn. The most honorable services were of a military 
nature, — for this system was not instituted for purposes of benefi- 
cence, but to uphold arbitrary power, — on which account a mili- 
tary spirit and sentiment pervaded feudal society, as it does also 
this play. Therefore in this society flourished in high vigor one 
of the strongest incentives to human action, a love of honor and 
distinction, to which men are spurred on by a sense of the brevity 
and perishable nature of their lives and the hope that by showing 
their merit they may win a name that shall live after them. But 
the highest merit is exhibited in doing the greatest good to man- 
kind, yet the ordinary way of gaining glory has been by warlike 
exploits, which in the main prove most destructive to others. In 
the feudal State, a love of honor, especially of that which is won 
by feats of arms, inspired the youthful nobles, who lost no oppor- 
tunity of distinguishing themselves by martial deeds, whether in 
the service of their own monarch or that of any other who would 
accept or allow their services. This indifference to which side 
they fought on is marked in the play by the French king, who 
had denied for reasons of state his assistance to the Florentines, 
and yet permitted his nobles to fight on either side at their pleas- 
ure. He says : — 

" For our gentlemen, that mean to see 

The Tuscan ser rice, freely have they leave 

To stand on either part." 

All employment but that of arms was considered unworthy of 
a gentleman ; even the Church and Law were secondary, unless 
perhaps in their very highest dignitaries, and the most learned 
professors of what Bacon calls " the noble art of medicine " were 
looked upon as little better than mountebanks. The highest 
honors w r ere awarded to physical strength and animal courage, 
united with skill in arms ; and these honors were made hereditary 
on the supposition that the qualities that gained them were trans- 
missible with the blood, and that the heir inherited the valor of 
the ancestor. Of course, this is a perpetuation of merit through 



ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 287 

the body, and a building up of a nobility upon the inferior side 
of man's nature. The importance of the body, then, as a su- 
preme factor in the creation of a nobility is apparent, a notion 
which the play indirectly satirizes by putting forward the imper- 
fections of the body and its liability to disease and death, and 
thus showing that, after all, its safety and dependence are upon 
art, and especially the art of medicine which the military class so 
much affect to despise. 

The transmission of titles and estates by blood at once created 
pride of birth, which scorned all alliance but with noble stock. 
This trait is embodied in Bertram, the conspicuous feature of 
whose character is a towering family pride, which leads him to 
spurn the proposal to marry Helen, a physician's daughter, 
though she was of incomparable worth both of mind and person, 
and backed by the favor of a powerful monarch. Nothing in- 
duces him to take her hand but the menaces of the king who, on 
his refusal, says, — 

" Here, take her hand, 
Proud, scornful boy, unworthy this good gift ; 
That dost in vile misprision shackle up 
My love and her desert. . . . 

Check thy contempt 



Or I will throw thee from my care forever 

Into the staggers and the careless lapse 

Of youth and ignorance ; both my revenge and hate 

Loosing upon thee, in the name of justice 

Without all terms of pity. Speak, thine answer." 

Act II. Sc. 3. 

This is ideal tyranny ; for no abuse of power can be greater than 
the exercise on the part of the magistrate of " revenge and hate 
in the name of justice without all terms of pity." It is probable 
that the poet paints the king's anger with such emphatic phrases 
in order to heighten the contrast between arbitrary political power 
resting on physical force and the beneficent effects of that power 
which springs from knowledge. 

Another contrast of like nature is presented by what is after- 
wards said of Bertram's prowess in battle, which is thus spoken 
of: — 

" The French Count has done most honourable service. He is reported to 
have taken their greatest commander, and that with his own hand he slew the 
Duke's brother." 



\ 



288 ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

This circumstance, though mentioned only in a street gossip, 
has a significance beyond the mere fact in its being an instance 
of false honor, if judged by the standard set up in the play, which 
teaches, as will be seen, that the highest service, and, as such, 
entitled to the greatest reward, proceeds from the beneficence 
which appertains to knowledge applied to the endowment and 
help of man's life, and that, therefore, Helen, who had by art 
saved the life of the King, after he had been abandoned by his 
physicians as being past cure, was entitled to greater honor and 
a higher rank than the disdainful Bertram, whose only distinc- 
tion, besides the empty one of birth, was derived from his ability 
to slay a fellow-creature in battle. The whole argument on this 
point, however, is summed up by the King, who, notwithstanding 
his arbitrary nature, has a clear mind, and skillfully draws the 
line of partition between the true and the false. 

" Ber. A poor physician's daughter my wife ! Disdain 

Rather corrupt me ever. 

King. 'T is only title thou disdain'st in her, the which 

I can build up. Strange is it, that our bloods, 

Of colour, weight and heat, pour'd all together, 

Would quite confound distinction, yet stand off 

In differences so mighty. If she be 

All that is virtuous (save what thou dislik'st, 

A poor physician's daughter) thou dislik'st 

Of virtue for the name : but do not so. 

From lowest place, when virtuous things proceed, 

The place is dignify'd by the doer's deed. 

Where great addition swells, and virtue none, 

It is a dropsied honour : good alone 

Is good without a name, vileness is so : 

The property by what it is should go, — 

Not by the title : she r s young, wise, fair, 

In these to nature she 's immediate heir, 

And these breed honour : that is honour's scorn 

Which challenges itself as honour 's born, 

And is not like the sire. Honours best thrive, 

When rather from our acts we them derive 

Than our fore-goers : the mere word 's a slave 

Debauch'd on every tomb ; on every grave 

A lying trophy ; and as oft is dumb 

Where dust and damn'd oblivion, is the tomb 

Of honour'd bones, indeed. What should be said ? 

If thou canst like this creature as a maid, 

I can create the rest : virtue and she 

Is her own dower ; honour and wealth from me." 

Act II. Sc. 3. 



ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 289 

Nobility by birth rests on the accidental ; it takes no note of 
the real differences of men, but often devolves titles and estates 
on fools and cowards, and " quite confounds distinction." We 
must therefore look to the reason, the faculty of knowledge for the 
superiority of one man over another. The rule is a simple one : 
he who renders the greatest help and service is entitled to the 
greatest reward ; and, consequently, knowledge, which is power, 
and goodness, which is the true exercise of such power, will give a 
preeminence to their possessor ; for the knowledge which is power 
is the knowledge of causes or the means of effecting ends, so that 
he who possesses this in the highest degree is able to confer the 
greatest benefits on his fellows, and will therefore be entitled to 
the highest distinction. 

Knowledge and goodness are but more comprehensive terms for 
wisdom and virtue, of which, when applied to the business world, 
skill and honesty are special forms. 

It should be noted that in Shakespeare honesty is often used 
in the broadest sense, and is equivalent to the Latin honestum, 
which comprises virtue and duty generally. 

Help is the highest form of doing good, and the highest form 
of help is the imparting of wise counsel and knowledge, particu- 
larly when this is intended to amend the mind and form the 
character. But in order to trace the analogies which the play 
presents in the minds and manners of its characters to the Ba- 
conian Process, its moral basis must be stated with more par- 
ticularity. 

A real distinction among men must rest in the mind, the seat 
of knowledge, u by which man excelleth man in that wherein man 
excelleth beasts" (Adv.). Knowledge is either of men or things: 
out of the knowledge of things (which are physical causes) reason 
forms the axioms of science and the modes of effecting ends, 
which supply the physical wants of man, as is instanced in the 
medical skill of Helena ; and out of the knowledge of men, that 
is, of the good and evil in them ; the reason which, by its very 
nature is the source of principles and the arbiter of right and 
wrong (for what is reasonable is right and what unreasonable, 
wrong), frames rules for the government of conduct which, besides 
the precepts of morality, embrace the maxims of prudence and 
policy, and fill popular speech with innumerable proverbs that 
condense into pithy sayings the common wisdom of the world. 
19 



290 ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

These rules cover or rather are identical with that Wisdom of 
Business which Bacon advises us to gather from the various oc- 
casions of life and store up in " proverb, parable, and fable." 
They necessarily form the substance of those counsels which are 
needed in all the affairs and at all periods of life, but which par- 
ticularly enter into the education of youth for the purpose of 
moulding their mincjs to • virtue and duty. But the knowledge 
here spoken of, though formulated into rules and codes, is not the 
dead abstract learning of books, but a living active knowledge 
implicit, as an operative principle, in the reason and will, and 
expressed, not in words, but in action. It is wisdom, the prac- 
tical form of "the true difference" or characteristic of man, and 
in the individual, determines his moral and intellectual nature or 
what in modern speech is called his " character." And he who 
has the largest measure of this " true difference " has ijiso facto 
the greatest distinction. 

And as in the physical world the knowledge of "the true differ- 
ence " or cause of any given nature furnishes (according to the 
Baconian system) an axiom or rule for superinducing that nature 
upon other natures, so in the moral world the knowledge of " the 
true difference " of man, stated in a rule, of which the practice is 
virtue and duty, furnishes the means of superinducing these quali- 
ties upon the minds and wills of others. 

To determine " the true difference," then, with respect to men, 
is simply a question of morality and character, involving a sound 
discernment of good and evil. 

For — although it is exceedingly trite and familiar, yet it is 
important to be considered in this play — the ends which men 
pursue are determined either by the blood or by the reason ; and 
if the appetites and affections which furnish the springs of action 
be directed to the apparent good and its pursuit, it is because 
the judgment fails to draw true lines of division between the 
apparent and the real good, but confounds right and wrong, 
pleasure and duty, honor and profit, and the like, and approves of 
low and sensual ends that debase the character, as may be seen in 
the downward career of Bertram. This want of discrimination 
between the apparent and real good is the fundamental error of 
human life, or shall we say the primary and universal weakness 
and defect of human nature, of which all sin, vice, and immorality 
are but different forms which, when confirmed by habit, stifle the 



ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 291 

conscience, blind the reason, and utterly confound good and evil ; 
whereas, if the reason bear sway and subject the desires to its 
dictates, they aim at real good, at works of beneficence, love, 
and self-sacrifice, through which a constant advance is made to- 
wards a higher life and a nobler character ; and this is seen in 
Helena. 

The want of discrimination through which evil is loved — not 
because it is evil but because it is supposed a good — can only 
be remedied by purging the mind of false estimates, and bringing 
home to it a knowledge of their true natures through the degra- 
dation and shame they entail, and thus awakening penitence and 
a desire of amendment. This is the first step in the improvement 
of the character ; it argues an expansion of the mind and a clear 
perception of good and evil. 

These familiar moral facts are noted only because they enter 
largely into the characterization and action of the piece. 

Distinction, as the reward of merit, has its origin in the moral 
sentiments of approval and disapproval that accompany judgments 
on actions. These sentiments naturally pass over from the actions 
to the agent, — in the case of right action exciting esteem and a 
disposition to reward the agent with commendation and honor, 
while, in the contrary case, indignation is felt and a desire to 
punish the wrong-doer, and visit him with scorn and disgrace. 
But men are eager to win praise and shun shame, and the moral 
sentiments, therefore, become powerful springs of action towards 
a correct life and the practice of rectitude. 

The desire of esteem easily runs into excess, and becomes 
self-esteem or pride in one's own excellence ; and, indeed, su- 
periority of any kind is apt to beget the same vice of character. 
We see in Bertram that pride of birth leads him to consider rank 
superior to any moral or intellectual worth. The highest excel- 
lence is the least self-conscious ; the humility of Helena, in view 
of her energy and ability, is one of the greatest charms of her 
character. 

In this play, which is made up of moral judgments, the moral 
sentiments are the atmosphere in which the characters live and 
have their being. The interest, it will be perceived, is derived 
not from the play of passion, but from the mode in which the 
persons exercise their judgments with respect to " the true dif- 
ference " in individuals, or, in other words, their characters. 



292 ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

Notwithstanding Helen's devoted love for Bertram (which, how- 
ever, is very quiet and briefly expressed), the level of emotion 
throughout the piece scarce ever rises higher than that of ad- 
miration and praise for virtue, and indignation and scorn for 
vice. 

It is a familiar fact that while the moral sentiments, awakened 
by actions, naturally, though often unjustly, affect our minds 
towards the agents, our partialities and dislikes for the agents 
immensely influence our judgments on their actions. In estimat- 
ing others, therefore, no less than in directing our own conduct, 
there is absolute need of guarding against error, and to this end 
the reason frames a rule to follow, or a standard of character to 
prevent mis judgment through feeling. 

And here again, for this rule, recourse must be had to a know- 
ledge of " the true difference " in man, or, what is the same 
thing, the idea of intellectual and moral excellence, which, in 
the business world presented in this play, is the common stand- 
ard of " skill and honesty," the qualities of the highest use and 
value in practical life. In this standard, perfection can never 
be arrived at, for on the intellectual side knowledge is always 
imperfect, and on the moral side there always lurks in the soul 
some secret evil too subtle for reason to warn against by rule or 
definition ; yet knowledge is ever progressive ; some advance may 
always be made in improving the standard and refining the char- 
acter. 

In this practical world, then, only that degree of excellence is 
demanded which is within the reasonable compass of man's fac- 
ulties to attain, as is the case with respect to the professional 
merit of Gerard de Narbon, of whom it is said that " his skill 
was almost as great as his honesty ; had it stretched so far, 
would have made nature immortal and death should have play 
for lack of work " (Act I. Sc. 1), or, as in military life is the 
case with Bertram's father, whose high honor and skillful soldier- 
ship are described by the king as a type of character that may be 
used as a model for imitation : — 

" Such a man 
Might be a copy to these younger times 
Which, follow'd well, would demonstrate them now 
But goers backward." 

Act I. Sc. 2. 



ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 293 

Helen, however, if we take Lafeu's enthusiastic description of 
her, touches the ideal at all points : — 

" Whose beauty did astonish the survey 
Of richest eyes ; whose words all ears took captive ; 
Whose dear perfection hearts that scorn'd to serve 
Humbly call'd mistress." 

Act V. Sc. 3. 

The only ideal that can be accepted without question by the 
practical man is the one of the greatest Power and Goodness 
offered by religion ; this receives the greatest honor and wor- 
ship ; to serve this power is to obey its mandates, which the 
rebellious nature of man is constantly violating, — a disobedience 
for which pardon can be obtained only by sincere penitence. 
These theological tenets, with others of a like kind, referring to 
man's weak and corrupt nature, run like an undercurrent in the 
dialogue, and now and then glance lightly on the surface, yet with 
emphasis enough to remind us that behind morality stands re- 
ligion as the guide of life, and that this is recognized by the prin- 
cipal persons of the piece as the ultimate arbiter of conduct and 
the awarder of rewards and punishments. Still in the world of 
affairs which, as here represented, is ruled by the moral senti- 
ments, honor and shame, it is to these we must look for the means 
of practically working a change in the minds of the corrupt and 
profligate. The fear of shame, of ignominy, of the contempt of 
the world, of the loss of name and reputation, are the motives 
which hold both men and women in the right path, and recall 
them when they have strayed. By these principles Helen re- 
claims Bertram. 

Since " the true difference " of men lies in their characters, 
and these are compounded of virtues and vices, it frequently be- 
comes difficult to strike an accurate balance between the good 
and evil in them. One of the clear-headed personages of the 
piece remarks : — 

" Our life is a web of mingled yarn, the good and ill together ; our virtues 
would be proud if our faults whipped them not, and our crimes would despair 
if they were not cherished by our virtues." Act IV. Sc. 3. 

This is a practical view and a real one, inasmuch as human 
character is the result of native disposition acted on by education 
(and environment, which is the most powerful educational influ- 
ence), the first furnishing the soil with its inherent tendencies to 



294 ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

the growth of good or evil, and the latter encouraging or repress- 
ing either the one or the other, to the improvement or deteriora- 
tion of the character. This difference between the qualities that 
are native to the blood and those implanted by cultivation in the 
soul is broadly marked in the piece, — a line of distinction being 
drawn throughout between the body and the soul for artistic 
effect. Thus, the Countess in giving precepts and "her holy 
wishes " to Bertram, says : — 

" Be thou blest, Bertram, and succeed thy father 
In manners as in shape ! thy blood and virtue 
Contend for empire in thee ! And thy goodness 
Share with thy birth-right ! Love all, trust a few," etc. 

Act I. Sc. 1. 
So the King says to Bertram : — 

"Youth, thou bearest thy father's face. 
Frank nature, rather curious than in haste, 
Hath well compos 'd thee. Thy father's moral parts 
May'st thou inherit too" 

Act I. Sc. 2. 

Hence the necessity of counsels and instructions — in one word, 
education — to teach the real difference of vice and virtue and fix 
in the will the practice of good habits and a pure morality. The 
mind being purged of false estimates, discerns the right and true, 
however obscured ; and what is equally important, it acquires a 
knowledge of evil, which is indispensable, for by such knowledge 
alone can it guard itself against evil arts and reclaim others from 
vice. " Men of corrupt understandings," says Bacon, "that have 
lost all sound discerning of good and evil, come possessed with 
this prejudicate opinion, that they think all honesty and goodness 
proceedeth out of a simplicity of manners and a kind of want 
of experience and unacquaintance with the affairs of the world. 
Therefore except they may perceive those things which are in 
their hearts, that is to say, their own corrupt principles and the 
deepest reaches of their cunning and rottenness, to be thoroughly 
sounded and known to him that goes about to persuade with 
them, they make but a play of the words of wisdom " (Medi- 
tationes Sacrce). 

It should be remarked that all counsels and instructions which 
are derived from experience and point out a course to be pursued 
for the accomplish uient of a result are the application of axioms 
and rules for the effecting of an end. They are precisely analo- 



ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 295 

gous with the use of an axiom in physical science for operating 
an effect : therefore all the advice, counsels, cautions, and com- 
mands that are encountered in the play go to support its character 
of a parable illustrating Operative Philosophy. 

In their eagerness to obtain success men thrust aside morality, 
which forbids dissimulation, and, instead, resort to " practice " 
and policy, which, though not necessarily corrupt, have always a 
tendency to knavery and fraud ; still, in the world of business 
there seems to be a middle ground held alike by morality and 
policy, where honesty may shelter itself against injustice by law- 
ful deception, but not so, however, as to violate morality in any 
essential particular. In these cases of conscience and of neces- 
sity, as they are called, there is a special need of a clear distinc- 
tion between what is intrinsically good or bad and that which 
is only formally so, in order that the line of separation may be 
traced between what is allowable and what not. In this dubious 
region, the criterion seems to be the motive, and to know this 
requires an ability to see beneath all the false constructions of 
words and actions the purpose which prompts them and gives 
them their moral value. Along this perilous path where acts may 
be right in principle though wrong in circumstance, Helen walks 
by reason of her pure heart and clear judgment without stain or 
injury. 

The choice of ends, therefore — for ends are motives and pur- 
poses — is the chief exponent of character, since it determines 
whether a man is governed by the reason or by the blood ; and 
Bacon, speaking of the amendment of evil manners and of the 
means of reducing the mind to order, lays down as the remedy, 
which of all others is the most compendious and summary, " the 
electing and proposing on to a man's self good and virtuous ends 
of his life and actions, such as may in a reasonable sort be within 
his compass to attain." 

After the formation of his own character, the best use of know- 
ledge by its possessor is the benefit of his fellow-men, especially 
the amendment and reformation of those who have fallen into 
vicious courses. Such a task is a work of genuine love ; and as 
it is the greatest help, so is it entitled to the highest love and 
praise. Of this nature is the task, which, in addition to the 
one formally assigned to her, Helen undertakes with regard to 
Bertram. 



296 ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

This feature of the play is in accordance with that dictum of 
Bacon's — urged by him with so much fervor and eloquence — 
that knowledge is perverted from its true end when not applied 
to the use and benefit of man's estate. 

On the other hand, nothing will corrupt more perniciously the 
manners of youth just entering on life than the companionship 
and example of an experienced man of the world, of base nature 
and dishonest life, who, notwithstanding his vices, has some showy 
parts and is believed by his companions to be quite complete in 
the ways of the world, and, in fact, in all that is worth knowing. 
Such a man is apt to be admired by fresh and ingenuous youth 
and adopted as a model ; but what is still worse, he so blends vice 
with apparent merit that he confounds moral differences in the 
minds of the inexperienced, who are led to think that profligacy 
is not merely venial, but meritorious, since one so admirable up- 
holds it both by opinion and practice. Of this class is "the 
counterfeit module," Parolles. 

The essence of the Wisdom of Business lies in the knowledge 
of men, through which we guard against knaves and impostors, 
and select proper instruments for the prosecution of designs — for 
" all matters are as dead images and the life of the execution of 
affairs rests in the choice of persons " (Essay on Counsel). And, 
further, as honesty and skill represent "the true difference" in 
the business world, an extensive knowledge of individuals and all 
their variety of character, both mental and moral, is indispensable 
to the choice. As the natural philosopher, through his knowledge 
of their essential natures, selects certain bodies for the production 
of certain effects, so the man of affairs, through his knowledge of 
men's characters, selects fit agents for effecting his ends. But in 
a world where distinctions are so difficult to draw between the 
true and the false, they are especially hard with respect to human 
character, compounded as it is of virtues and vices so closely and 
subtly intertwined that they render the heart a mystery, even 
to such an extent that men often are proverbially and profoundly 
ignorant of their own motives and unacquainted with the essential 
nature of their own speech and action. 

" Yet that this knowledge of man is possible," says Bacon, 
" Solomon is our authority, who saith, Counsel in the heart of 
man is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw 
it out." And in his Wisdom of Business, in that branch of it 



ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 297 

that treats of the pursuit of fortune, he lays down as his first 
precept that we obtain, so far as we can, that window which 
Momus required, who, seeing in the frame of man's heart such 
angles and recesses, found fault that there was not a window to 
look into its mysterious and tortuous windings. This window we 
shall obtain by carefully procuring information of the particular 
persons with whom we have to deal, etc. De Aug. Book VIII. 
ch. ii. 

To this window the old lord, Lafeu, alludes, when having put 
Parolles' courage to the test by the grossest indignities and found" 
him craven, he says : " Do not plunge thyself too far in anger, 
lest thou hasten thy trial ; which if — Lord have mercy upon 
thee for a hen ! So, my good window of lattice, fare thee well ; 
thy casement I need not open, I look through thee." Act II. 
Sc. 3. 

" The surest key," according to Bacon, " to unlock the minds 
of men is by searching and thoroughly understanding either their 
dispositions and natures or their intentions and ends (ingeniis et 
naturis ipsorum velfinibus et intentionibns) . De Aug. Book VIII. 
ch. ii. 

Natures and ends can hardly be learned except through words 
and actions : so that, besides the relations of others, words and 
actions are the main sources of a knowledge of character. 

Words are the directest mode ; they are the vehicle of know- 
ledge ; and the very aim and object of language is to bring together 
men's minds and enable them to understand each other's intents 
and meanings. Without this mutual understanding, society could 
not exist. Speech is the deliverance and expression of the soul, 
and gives life to promises and makes veracity the chief constituent 
of honesty and honor. By language men look through the same 
moral medium and judge by a common standard. But in propor- 
tion to its use is the extent of its abuse ; and great as it is as a 
help, it is equally great as an impediment. Even when a man 
purports to lay bare his mind by confessing and discovering his 
secret intent, he is liable to be misunderstood through the im- 
perfection of speech itself ; but when to this source of error is 
superadded intentional deceit, which hides the heart behind a 
mask of ambiguous words and actions, the discovery of liis real 
self is like that of a perplexing riddle, of which, nevertheless, it is 
indispensable to discover the meaning in order to arrive at a 



298 ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

knowledge of the essential nature or " the true difference" of 

o 

the man. 

Another source of the knowledge of particular men is the infor- 
mation derived from others; this is largely exemplified both in 
that common reputation, which flies about concerning individuals, 
originating one can scarce tell where, and to be received with the 
greatest distrust; and that more special and detailed knowledge 
which emanates from friends and followers, and claims accuracy 
on the ground of personal experience. But in all cases, informa- 
tion must be weighed by the veracity and intelligence, that is, 
the character of the speaker. The play affords a notable instance 
in the mendacious and slanderous reports given by Parolles as to 
the honesty and skill of his fellow-officers. 

In order to pierce the veil of craft and dissimulation in which 
men wrap themselves, recourse must often be had to "prac- 
tice" and the arts of policy, by which the minds of men are 
cunningly wrought upon, and the secrets of their hearts dis- 
covered. 

In his essay on this subject of " Negotiation " Bacon says : 
u All practice is to discover or to work. Men discover themselves 
in trust, in passion, at unawares, or of necessity, when they would 
have somewhat done, and cannot find an apt pretext. If you 
would work any man (si quern ad nittum fingere cupias, nt hide 
ejjbcias aliquid) you must either know his nature and fashions, and 
so lead him, or his ends, and so persuade him, or his weakness 
and disadvantages, and so awe him, or those that have interest in 
him, and so govern him." 

All these different rules of practice, or modes of bending others 
to our purposes, are exemplified in the piece, and at times two or 
more of them are combined in the same example. 

The Countess works upon Helen's love for Bertram, and causes 
her to confess her secret passion ; Lafeu works upon the coward- 
ice and " weakness " of Parolles, and so " awes " him and makes 
manifest his false pretensions ; the French lords also play upon 
his fears, and cause him to reveal his treachery to Bertram ; 
Helen works upon the King by exciting his hopes of recovery, and 
makes him an instrument for effecting her ends ; she also enlists 
"the interest " of Widow Capulet, and so " governs " Diana as 
an agent in her scheme to win Bertram ; Diana works upon 
Bertram, and obtains his ancestral ring ; Parolles works upon 



ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 299 

Bertram's inclinations and love of honor to instigate him to fly to 
Florence ; Helen, moreover, discovers herself " at unawares " when 
she is overheard by the Steward confessing her love. Other in- 
stances might be added ; but if we examine the texture of the dia- 
logue, it will be found throughout to have reference to means and 
measures, to counsels, instructions, and commands towards the 
effecting of some end. 

To read, then, the riddle of the human heart, it is necessary to 
reach the motive or end, for this reveals the essential nature of 
words and actions, the same act being either good or bad accord- 
ing to the intent of the agent ; as Helen says with respect to 
the stratagem to be practiced upon Bertram : — 

" Which if it speed, 
Is wicked meaning in a lawful deed. 
And lawful meaning in a lawful act, 
Where "both not sin and yet a, sinful fact" 

No reliance, therefore, can be placed upon words and actions as 
expressions of the soul, until we are assured that we understand 
the motive that constitutes their " true difference/ 9 

The foregoing views of life and man are concrete in the persona 
and action of the piece, which is so constructed that the never- 
ending struggle in the nature of man between the blood and the 
reason is directly presented. Out of this grows the consideration 
of rules of conduct, and the action of the piece raises questions 
that reach the primary principles of morality and policy. This 
necessarily brings into view character, which becomes the subject 
on which the personages of the piece are called upon to exercise 
their judgments, and for this purpose they adopt as a standard 
the greatest honesty and knowledge; that is, the ablest helper 
or wisest counselor. This is he who knows the true difference 
or real nature of things, who discerns the essence of good and 
evil under all circumstances, who judges correctly in the choice of 
ends and means, and Who, therefore, gains the highest distinct inn 
for character. The most effectual helper is tin* counselor who 
incorporates into his character and gives practical life and opera- 
tion to the rules of morality and policy, and who by teaching 
others guides them in the true course or restrains them from the 
false one. The wise man, therefore, who is both moral and 
politic, who both knows and acts, stands at the centre of this 
view of practical life. 



300 ALL >S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

Helen, a physician's daughter, has been reared in the house- 
hold of a great feudal noble, and has acquired, in addition to the 
science incidentally received from her wise father, the accomplish- 
ments of a high-born lady ; so that, although a dependant in sta- 
tion and clearly apprehending the immense disparity of rank 
between herself and patrons, she feels that, on personal grounds, 
she is essentially their equal. The King, struck with admiration 
of her beauty and courage, makes the following judgment of 
her : — 

" All that life can rate 
Worth name of life in thee hath estimate, 
Youth, beauty, wisdom, courage, virtue, all 
That happiness and prime can happy call." 

The Countess, her foster-mother, from a familiar and domestic 
experience, forms a more practical estimate. She says : " I have 
those hopes of her good that her education promises ; her disjwsi- 
tions she inherits, which makes fair gifts fairer ; for when an 
unclean mind carries virtuous qualities, these commendations go 
with pity ; they are virtues and traitors too ; in her they are bet- 
ter for their simpleness ; she derives her honesty and achieves her 
goodness." 

Thus blood and education unite to exalt her character ; her na- 
tive honesty of soul has been strengthened and enriched with fair 
gifts by education. 

Judged, however, by her own words and actions, she possesses 
sensibility, judgment, and fortitude ; exhibiting warm feeling, a 
clear intellect, and a strong will, a combination that endows her 
with an efficiency undaunted by any difficulty, and a generosity 
capable of any sacrifice. 

Having been reared under the same roof with the young Count 
Bertram, she has loved him from her childhood, and her affection 
has become the one strong, predominant passion of her nature. 
It is a type of a powerful, controlling desire which furnishes a 
persistent motive to the will for any effort that promises reason- 
able hope of success. Her clear intellect sees all things in the 
simple light of the sense, uninfluenced by imagination or feeling, 
and admits no intrusion of hope or fear, that is not approved by 
reason. She weighs every circumstance for what it is really worth, 
and is unbiased by artificial distinctions. This implies a know- 
ledge of things as they are, and a mind capable of discovering 



ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. SOI 

the " true differences " or essential natures of things. Her plans, 
therefore (when she makes any), are almost sure of success, since 
they are based upon an accurate judgment in the selection of 
means, times, and persons. 

Helen's temperament gives a good example of Bacon's doctrine 
on the delusiveness of hope. Bacon ever inveighs against inor- 
dinate hope ; he calls it " a madness," " a waking dream," and 
to the First Edition of his Counsels and Essays, 1597 (about 
the date of this play in its first form, supposing it to be the 
same as Love's Labour Won, mentioned by Meres, 1598), there 
were appended certain Religionis Meditationes, one of which was 
a tract on " Earthly Hope," with the motto, " Better is the sight 
of the eyes than the wandering of the desires," and in this he 
says : " The sense, which takes everything simply as it is makes 
a better mental condition and estate than those imaginations and 
wanderings of the mind." And this freedom from delusion he 
also makes a rule of his philosophy, for he says, " it all depends 
on keeping the eye steadily fixed upon the facts of nature and 
on receiving their images simply as they are." 

And he further says : " All hope is to be employed upon the 
life to come ; but here on earth, by how much purer is the sense 
of things present without infection or tincture of imagination, 
by so much wiser and better is the soul." 

And so Helen, although being in love with Bertram she natu- 
rally indulges her " idolatrous fancy " in dwelling upon his image 
and in drawing 

" His arched brow, his hawking eye, his curls 
In her heart's table," — 

yet sees with perfect distinctness her relations to Bertram, and 
that they preclude the hope of marrying him. She thus describes 
her passion and its hopelessness : — 

" It were all one 
That I should love some bright particular star 
And think to wed it, he is so above me : 
in his bright radiance and collateral light 
Must I be com ioited, not in his sphere." 

Although cherishing no hope — for her reason can point to no 
ground for any — she, on tlio other hand, embraces no rash de- 
spair. Notwithstanding the immense social gnlf between her and 



302 ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

Bertram, there is nothing but that gulf between them, and by 
merit it may be over-passed. In the confession of her love, which 
is wrung from her by the Countess, there is an entire freedom 
from self-delusion, and at the same time it manifests an inward 
assurance that the case is not desperate, if an opportunity should 
offer. 

" I confess 
Here on my knees before high heaven and you 



I love your son. 

I follow him not 
By any token of presumptuous suit, 
Nor would I have him, till I do deserve him, 
Yet never know how that desert should he. 
I know I love in vain, strive against hope," etc. 

[It may be observed that the passage from which these verses 
are taken is a fine instance of Shakespeare's power of adapting 
rhythm to sentiment. It is like a spontaneous utterance stamped 
with the sincerity of the speaker's mind, the sound answering to 
the sense and the melody of the verse, and its pauses rising and 
falling in exact unison with the fluctuating currents of feeling of 
the speaker.] 

But the opportunity offers : she hears the conversation between 
Lafeu and the Countess, from which she learns the nature of the 
King's malady, and that the " congregated college " of " most 
learned doctors " have pronounced it incurable ; and remember- 
ing that among the remedies left her by her father there was one 
especially suited to the King's case, she at once forms the bold 
project of offering her services to the King for his cure, on the 
condition that if she fail her life is forfeit, but if she succeeds the 
King shall bestow upon her the hand in marriage of any one of 
his wards she may select. She thus reasons with herself : — 

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie 
Which we ascribe to Heaven : the fated sky 
Gives us free scope : only doth backward pull 
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull. 

And with this encouraging thought, she is aware that in spite of 
the barriers of hereditary rank, an intrinsic worth can equalize 
outward differences, and that if she strives, she may by merit 
show herself worthy of Bertram. 



ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 303 

" Whoever strove 
To shew her merit that did miss her love ? 
The mightiest space in Fortune nature brings 
To join like likes and kiss like native things." 

Nor ought she to be deterred by the apparent impossibility of 
the task, for — 

Impossible seem strange attempts to those 
Who weigh their pains in sense. 

Attempts that are only strange and unusual seem actually im- 
possible to those who weigh only the difficulties, and do not see 
the means of overcoming them. And knowing that she holds 
the means of restoring the king to health, and of possibly obtain- 
ing Bertram's hand for her service, she does not hesitate to form 
the project, and to put it into immediate execution. She says : — 

" The king's disease — my project may deceive me 
But my intents are fix'd and will not leave me." 

Act I. Sc. 1. 

This likewise is in accordance with Bacon's doctrines, for not- 
withstanding his soberness of judgment, that repelled all hope as 
a delusion, it did not forbid his weighing the possibilities of 
things, and in his Tables of Discovery he always assigns a place 
to a " Chart of Apparent Impossibilities or Things to be wished 
for " QHumance Optativaz). " For to form judicious wishes is as 
much a part of knowledge as to ask judicious questions " (Nov. 
Org. Book II. Aph. 49). 

Of course, a judicious wish is one warranted by a just estimate 
of the probabilities. 

And so with Helen's plan ; it is to her mind perfectly feasible. 
She yields unduly to neither hope nor fear, but looking at things 
just as they appear to the sense clearly sees her way to a fortunate 
issue. And in this, again, she shows a wisdom akin to that advo- 
cated by Bacon in another passage of his Essay on Earthly Hope, 
which runs in these words : " It is fit to forecast and presuppose 
upon sound and sober conjecture good things as well as evil, . . . 
only this must be the work of the understanding and judgment 
with a just inclination of the feeling."" This describes Helen's 
forecasting of the result. 

But though Helen is depicted as indulging in no hope of suc- 
cess, but such a rational one as a just estimate of the probabilities 



304 ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

will warrant, she has yet another trait which is a frequent accom- 
paniment of great strength of mind, that is, a confidence in one's 
ability, which in the case of great politicians and leaders generally 
takes the form of a superstitious belief in one's destiny, or star. 
Of a feeling akin to this Helen's character partakes, although in 
her such premonition of success is lightly touched, and is drawn 
in keeping with her feminine modesty and delicacy, as a quasi 
religious faith, growing out of the veneration in which she holds 
her father's memory. She says : — 

" There 's something hints 
More than my father's skill (which was the greatest 
Of his profession) that his good receipt 
Shall, for my legacy, be sanctified 
By the luckiest stars in heaven." 

Act I. Sc. 3. 

And this doctrine, also, Bacon teaches as a part of the Wisdom 
of Business. He sets forth that these confidences in men who do 
not attribute their successes to fortune " are ever unhallowed and 
unblessed, and, therefore, those that arje great politiques indeed 
ever ascribed their successes to their felicity, and not to their 
skill or virtue" 

This feeling is especially apparent in Helen, when she urges 
upon the King a trial of her remedy. 

"He that of greatest works is finisher 
Oft does them by the weakest minister : 
So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown, 
When judges have been babes : great floods have flown 
From simple sources ; and great seas have dry'd. 
When miracles have by the greatest been deny'd 
Oft expectation fails, and most oft there 
Where most it promises ; and oft it hits 
Where hope is coldest, and despair most sits. 



It is not so with him that all things knows 

As J t is with us, that square our guess by shows. 

But most it is presumption in us, when 

The help of heaven we count the act of men. 

Dear sir, to my endeavours give consent j 

Of heaven, not me, make an experiment," etc. 

Act II. Sc. 1. 

The issue justifies her judgment ; she is successful and wins 
Bertram's hand as a reward for her service to the King ; but 



ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 305 

Bertram refuses to treat her as a wife, flies from home, and takes 
service with the Duke of Florence ; he, moreover, sends her a 
letter, in which, in order to quench in her all hope, he assigns 
certain apparently impossible conditions for her to perform, before 
he will receive her as a wife, and declares that " until he has no 
wife he has nothing in France." 

This nullifies all her efforts ; there is no longer a ground for 
effecting success. Yet in the face of this dreadful trial, she 
retains her self-government, and beyond one or two ejaculations, 
as " It is a dreadful sentence, " 'T is bitter," she bears her grief 
in silence. She is one who wastes no energy in outcries against 
Fortune ; yet her situation is most humiliating to her pride, being 
that of a rejected bride ; but her generosity and nobleness of 
nature protect, nay, exalt her. Her thoughts are for Bertram 
only : she looks upon herself as the cause of his being self -exiled, 
and his life exposed in battle ; and at once resolves to sacrifice all 
her own wishes to his welfare by retiring to a religious house and 
leaving him at liberty to return to France. She thus solilo- 
quizes : — 

" I will be gone ; 

My being here it is that holds thee hence. 

Shall I stay here to do 't ? No, no, although 

The air of paradise did fan the house, 

And angels offic'd all : I will be gone, 

That pitiful rumour may report my flight, 

To consolate thine ear. Come, night ! end, day ! 

For, with the dark, poor thief, I '11 steal away." 

Act III. Sc. 2. 

This step on her part is brought to his knowledge, and it 
strongly works upon his feelings. One of his companions, speak- 
ing of his mother's letter containing this news, says : — 

" There 's something in it stings his nature, for on the reading it he changed 
almost into another many 

This penitence, thus wrought by her nobleness of conduct, lays 
a foundation for a permanent change of his sentiments towards 
her. 

Helen's skill and efficiency are not displayed so much in in- 
venting deep and cunning schemes as in the judgment and prompt- 
itude with which she seizes upon passing events and converts 
them into the means of attaining her ends. This trait, also, an- 
swers to a doctrine of Bacon, who says: " It lias boon commonly 
20 



306 ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

seen that those who have attributed most to fortune and held 
themselves alert and vigilant to use occasions as they present 
themselves, have enjoyed great prosperity, whereas deep schemers, 
who have trusted to have all things cared for and considered, 
have been unfortunate." De mensura rerum. 

And Helen, after having temporarily foregone her design, yet 
falling in with the Widow Capulet and her daughter and learning 
the relations they hold to Bertram, at once sees her opportunity, 
devises her plan, and converts these persons into instruments of 
its execution. She engages not only their zeal, but their affec- 
tions, in her service. 

Helen's mind is a type of an intellect uninfected by imagina- 
tion or feeling ; it justly discriminates between the true and the 
false, and, always looking at the veritable natures of things, it 
judges of them by their inward intent and meaning, which alone 
give them their moral value ; and the perception of this truth, 
together with the consciousness of her own high and pure pur- 
poses, enables her to undergo the indignity and degradation which 
she passes through, and, in fact, dignifies conduct which the con- 
ventional world would consider deplorably wanting in due pride 
and self-respect. She shows a like discrimination in judging of 
Bertram, perceiving that although evil companions and youthful 
passions had developed the vices of his character, there was be- 
hind them a true nobility deserving of her love. It is more for 
his sake than for her own that she makes the most painful sacri- 
fices. This intrinsic purity preserves our respect under all cir- 
cumstances, and in fact it explains why the poet was willing to 
dramatize a subject so repulsive, for he uses it as the means of 
developing an exquisite purity of soul that could not be made 
apparent under circumstances less compromising. 

The cure of the King had been simply the application of a rule 
of practice to produce a prescribed result ; it depends upon physi- 
cal causes alone, but the performance of the task assigned her 
by Bertram can only be carried out by stratagem, for, unless Ber- 
tram is deceived, it can never be accomplished. She is, there- 
fore, compelled to resort to policy and practice ; and this is justi- 
fied by her and her coadjutors on the ground that 

" It is no sin 
To cozen him that would unjustly win." 

Deceit and fraud used by Bertram to work ends that are base 
are justly met and counter-checked by craft and dissimulation. 



ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 307 

But even after succeeding, she must have failed to convince 
Bertram and others of the facts as they had actually occurred, 
except for her astuteness in perceiving what proofs were neces- 
sary and in what way they must be presented to produce the 
requisite impression. This point she effects by spreading circum- 
stantial reports of her own death, by which she causes the imme- 
diate return of Bertram to Rousillon, — a step which both brings 
him within the power of the King and lays a ground for the charge 
of Diana, whom he had promised to marry after his wife's death ; 
but the chief proof that was to identify her own action in the 
affair was the ring given her by the king, which she puts upon 
Bertram's finger to the express end 

" That what in time proceeds 
May token to the future their past deeds." 

The details need not be given here ; but with the aid of Diana, 
whom she instructs in her part and makes ready with ambiguous 
statements, she works up the matter into a perplexing riddle, 
which seems to be entirely without a clue, until, upon Diana's 
saying, — 

" So there 's my riddle, one that 's dead is quick, 
And now behold the meaning," — 

Helen, who is supposed dead, enters, and it is at once apparent 
that she and Diana are in collusion, and that it is she and not 
Diana who has been the chief actor in the plot, and that she has 
performed the task which had been imposed upon her. 

This incident of the ring, which Helen gives Bertram, and 
which is so absolutely necessary as a proof to discriminate be- 
tween Helen and Diana, is not in the original story, nor do we 
find there the riddle-like denouement of the piece ; but these in- 
tricately woven incidents may be considered as representing, in a 
parable-play, the secret and tortuous ways of Nature which Ba- 
con invented his process or body of rules to discover, and which, 
on that account, he called " the clue of the labyrinth " {filum 
labyrinthi). In that case, Helen, who solved the riddle, would 
represent science, the aim of which is to draw true lines of par- 
tition between things, according to their true differences or essen- 
tial natures. The ability to make true distinctions, and to see 
and know things actually as they are in their veritable natures, is 
the conspicuous trait of Helen's mind. 



308 ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

It will be noted that the whole puzzle grows out of Bertram's 
having mistaken Helen for Diana, — a palpable proof of his ina- 
bility to perceive real differences, and typical of his mind, which 
in its prominent traits is the direct opposite of Helen's. 

He is a young noble, whose native good qualities have been 
perverted by a false education and evil companions. His breed- 
ing as a feudal lord has infected him with an overweening pride 
of birth, which clouds his judgment both of himself and others. 
He is totally ignorant of the world, has never been at court, 
and has lived a life so secluded that he never has even heard 
of what Lafeu calls " the notorious" illness of the King. But 
in his own domain he is supreme. His every wish is gratified, 
and he is, therefore, without discipline and self-government. His 
blood, of which he is so proud, is hot and unbridled, and gener- 
ates desires that lead to conduct that would be base in the basest 
hind. 

Having been summoned to court by the King, he meets there a 
number of young lords, who are about to start for Florence to 
take service with the Duke. Bertram, with the love of adventure 
and of honor natural to youth, wishes to take part with them, 
but the King forbids him. This check galls him, and excites a 
rebellious spirit in his ill-governed temper ; he at once shows his 
discontent, — 

" I am commanded here and kept a coil with 

c Too young ' and c the next year ' and ' 't is too early,' " etc., — 

and complains that he has to wait, — 

" Creaking his shoes on the plain masonry 
Till honour is bought up and no sword worn 
But one to dance with, — " 

and he adds, " By Heaven, I '11 steal away." 

While in this mood and harboring this intent, he is forced by 
the arbitrary power of the King into a marriage with one whom he 
regards as vastly his inferior. He knows Helen as a dependant, 
not to say a servant, of his mother, and with the pride of a feudal 
lord and the arrogance of youth, he spurns the alliance. But the . 
menaces of the king compel him to accede, and this strengthens 
his intention of flight. " In war," he says, " there is no strife 
to the dark house and detested wife." He flies to Florence, 
where he receives a high military rank, in which his inherited 









ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 309 



courage and soldiership (for his father is described as a model 
soldier, who might be taken for " a copy to the younger times ") 
enable him to win great distinction. 

But he is a jumble of virtues and defects, moral and mental. 
Brave and successful as a soldier, he is lamentably deficient in 
judgment of men and things. Blinded by pride and the preju- 
dices of his class, he sees nothing as it actually is. His enormous 
overestimate of his own worth on account of his birth and title as 
compared with Helen reveals the weakness of his judgment and 
his inability to see true differences. In like manner his admira- 
tion of Parolles is another gross instance of his want of discrimi- 
nation. His faults and vices are due in a large measure to his 
inexperience and to his not being " settled from the boiling heat 
of his affections nor attempered with time and experience ; " and 
on that account we may the more easily overlook them and admit 
his mother's plea, who lays them to 

" Natural rebellion, done in the blaze of youth, 
When oil and fire too strong for reason's force 
O'erbears it and burns on." 

Bertram may be also in part excused by reason of his being 
deceived in the character of Parolles, who exercises a pernicious 
influence over him. Bertram believes him to be a valiant and 
skillful soldier, and a large part of the play is taken up with a 
plot to expose to him this gross error of his judgment. 

The old courtier, Lafeu, warns him against Parolles as an un- 
trustworthy companion. He says : " Trust him not in matters of 
heavy consequence ; I have kept of them tame and know their 
natures." 

One of his fellow officers tells him : " It was fit you knew him, 
lest reposing too far in his virtue (which he hath not) he might 
at some great and trusty business in a main danger fail you" 

Nothing but Parolles' shameless confession and betrayal of his 
comrades opens Bertram's eyes to his true character, and enables 
him " to take a true measure of his own judgment, wherein he so 
curiously had set this counterfeit." 

But not only in his judgment of others but also of his own 
conduct does Bertram fail of drawing true distinctions, lie is 
dishonorable in the highest degree towards Diana Capulet, par- 
ticularly in the base falsehood with which he attempts to asperse 






310 ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

her character in order to shield himself from the consequences of 
his broken promise. Nothing can excuse his disgraceful conduct* 
but it may be said in extenuation that it is the result of his edu- 
cation, for which he is not responsible. A noble of high birth 
and filled from childhood with an inflated sense of his own supe- 
riority, he feels himself as much privileged in the moral, as in the 
social, world, and does not consider himself under the same neces- 
sity of keeping his obligations to one of humble birth (particularly 
in a love-intrigue) as he would with one of his own class. He 
conceives that he has a right to protect his rank at all hazards 
from claims that would debase it in the eyes of his high-born 
friends. After Diana has made charge that he promised her 
marriage as the price of her honor, he defends himself by plead- 
ing his superior station ; he says to the King : — 

" Let your highness 
Lay a more noble thought upon my honour 
Than for to think that / would sink it here." 

His pride (with which he supposes the King will sympathize) 
revolts at " sinking " his honor by a marriage with one of inferior 
birth, but he deems it no " sinking " of his honor to make a false 
promise in order to betray a virtuous gentlewoman. Such is his 
confusion of moral differences : he confounds honor of station 
with honor of sentiment and conduct. 

But his confusion of thought is habitual ; he is utterly without 
method or form. After deciding to depart from Florence, he 
takes leave of the Duke upon casually meeting him in the street ; 
and having heard of the death of his wife, he gives to it no more 
attention than he would to any ordinary incident. He says : " I 
have to-night despatched sixteen businesses a month's length a 
piece, by an abstract of success : I have congee'd with the Duke ; 
done my adieu with his nearest ; buried a wife ; mourn'd for her ; 
writ to my lady mother I am returning ; entertain'd my convoy, 
and between these main parcels of despatch, effected many nicer 
deeds," etc., — a medley of affairs, which, however incongruous, he 
jumbles together and regards one of as much weight as another. 

A character like Bertram's, of which the predominant trait is 
pride, is peculiarly amenable to opinion, for his happiness depends 
upon the gratification of this feeling through the high estimate 
awarded him by others. Disgrace and contempt from his equals 






ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 311 

in rank are the greatest miseries that can be inflicted upon him ; 
and on this trait of his character Helen works, — following 
therein some advice of Bacon's, who in his directions for the 
amendment of the mind speaks of " setting affection against affec- 
tion," and of " using the aid of one to master another, like hunters 
and fowlers, who use to hunt beast with beast and catch bird with 
bird, upon which foundation is erected that excellent use in civil 
government of reward and punishment ... using those predomi- 
nant affections of hope and fear to suppress and bridle all the 
rest." De Aug. Book VII. ch. iii. 

And in a letter written by Bacon to Sir Henry Savill he treats 
of several methods of altering the mind, of which one is, " When 
one affection is healed and corrected by another, as when cow- 
ardice is remedied by shame and dishonour, or sluggishness or 
backwardness by indignation and emulation. And so of the like." 

This is the plan which Helen adopts for the reformation of 
Bertram. She arouses his pride to take arms against the deep 
disgrace he has incurred, and remove it by changing his course. 

Like the Countess, Lafeu, and all of Bertram's friends, Helen 
believes him to be led astray and depraved by his corrupt para- 
site, Parolles. She knows that his mind has been perverted by 
bad counsel and false opinion ; that beneath the faults of custom 
and prejudice he possesses a noble nature, and that his very pride 
will revolt at his vicious courses as soon as he is made to see them 
in their true nature ; and this he is not likely to do until he is 
made to feel through the contempt and scorn of those who com- 
mand his respect, the infamy attaching to them ; she intends, 
therefore, not to restrict herself merely to the performance of the 
task imposed by Bertram as the condition of his accepting her as 
a wife, but means that he shall gladly do so, both as essential to 
his own safety and as a duty and an atonement he owes to her 
and to his own honor. Consequently she so frames the accusation 
of Diana against him as most to work upon his pride and his 
sense of honor and right. The charge is made by Diana ; it is 
proved by Parolles ; and the King, indignant and contemptuous, 
stands ready to enforce the penalty ; Lafeu openly expresses his 
scorn ; all of Bertram's friends turn away from him as a dishon- 
ored man ; he is bowed to the earth by the shame and disgrace of 
his situation; a he boggles shrewdly;" when at this juncture, 
Helen (who has been lamented as dead, and of whom he had 
spoken as one 



312 ALL 'S WELL THAT EXDS WELL. 

" Whom all men prais'd and /, since I have lost, 
Have lov'd ") — 

reappears, and he discovers that by her he is rescued from degra- 
dation : that even the charge against him is by her intervention 
absolutely without foundation ; that her love has shielded him 
throughout ; and in the joy and gratitude of his heart, as well 
as through the stiugs of his conscience, he not only receives her 
as a wife, but with sincere contrition solicits pardon for his of- 
fenses. The scales of a false pride drop from his eyes, and he at 
last sees things as they are, recognizing that Helen's truth and 
love ennobled her more than any rank could do, and that such 
qualities alone are worthy of the highest distinction. 

The Countess interests us by her sweetness, her dignity, and 
her sorrows. Her heart is burdened with grief at the miscon- 
duct of Bertram and the trials of Helen. Her good sense and 
long experience make her a wise counselor and efficient assist- 
ant ; she always sees and advises what is best, and in all things 
manifests honesty of purpose. Skillful in reading the heart, she 
draws from Helen a confession of her secret love, but at once 
gives her all her sympathy and all the aid in her posver. She has 
been left a widow with the care of a son, who is just eutering on 
manhood, and who has been commanded by the King to attend 
him at court. She parts from him with great misgiving, for she 
knows how ill prepared he is for the temptations of the world, 
and tells Lafeu, " 'Tis an unseasoned courtier ; advise him." Her 
fears soon prove well founded ; reports of his disobedience to the 
King and of his cruelty to Helen soon reach her, and she discerns 
with equal clearness the faults of the son of her blood and the 
virtues of the child of her adoption. Although of high rank her- 
self, she pays no heed to arbitrary distinctions ; she recognizes in 
Helen a worth superior to any merely factitious rank, and loves 
and honors it accordingly. She is balanced between natural affec- 
tion for her son and her love for her adopted daughter, and says : 

" Which of them both 
Is dearest to me I have no skill in sense 
To make distinction.*' 

With all her refinement and kindliness of nature, she is con- 
spicuous also for business capacity. She decides her course almost 
intuitively. 



ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 313 

She is tolerant of the faults of the young, having remembrance 
of her own youthful days, when passion strove to gain the upper 
hand of reason, and thus comments on Helen's love : — 

" Even so it was with me when I was young ; 
If we are nature's, these are ours ; this thorn 
Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong ; 
Our blood to us, this to our blood is born ; 
It is the shew and seal of nature's truth, 
When love's strong passion is imprest in youth : 
By our remembrances of days foregone, 
Such were our faults, or then we thought them none," etc. 

The Countess possesses that loveliness of character which comes 
from a genuine desire for the happiness of others, and constant 
exertions to promote it. 

Lafeu is a courtier who has grown gray in the service of the 
king, with whom he is a sort of privileged person ; he is a humor- 
ist and a man of the world, and is distinguished for his knowledge 
of character. The King, Helen, Parolles, the Clown, all come 
under review, and he speaks of each according to his merit. His 
experience enables him to make true distinctions. None escape 
him ; he causes the Clown to draw a distinction between a fool and 
a knave, which proves him both. His business is to unveil those 
about him. He carries into age the vivacity of youth, and his 
lively fancy and figurative style give spirit and animation to his 
talk. In his own character, he is brave and loyal ; an apologist 
for the faults of youth when they proceed from heat of blood and 
inexperience, but treating with utter scorn and contempt what is 
intrinsically base and ignoble. 

The two " French lords " are admirable characters ; spirited, 
honorable, courteous, and, though young and buoyant, yet moral, 
sententious, and severe. Some of their reflections upon Bertram's 
conduct remind us of what " the lofty grave tragedians taught, 
in chorus or iambic" ; and they, too, are a kind of chorus in the 
running comments they keep up on Bertram's doings and fail- 
ings. Their punctilious morality emphasizes by contrast his license. 
They have old heads on young shoulders, and draw true lines of 
distinction. 

The Clown has a clear mind hidden under an affected confusion 
of thought and language. He delights in self-contradictions and 
inconsistency. His purpose seems to be to misunderstand, per- 



314 ALL "S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. % 

plex, and confuse all with, whom lie speaks. As a specimen of his 
style, we may take his answer to Helen, wlio asks him if the 
Countess is well. 

" Clo. She is not well, but yet she has her health : she 's very merry ; but 
yet she 's not well : but, thanks be given, she 's very well and wants nothing 
i' the world ; but yet she is not well. 

Helen. If she be very well, what does she ail that she is not very well ? 

Clo. Truly, she 's very well, but for two things. 

HeL What two things ? 

Clo. One, that she J s not in heaven, whither God send her quickly ! the 
other, that she 's in earth, from whence God send her quickly ! ' ; 

The following is a specimen of his willful misconstruction o 
words. 

" Countess. Commend me to my kinsmen and my son, 
This is not much. 

Clo. Not much commendation to them. 

Countess. Not much employment for you. You understand me." 

In almost all he says we hear an undertone of irony and of cyn- 
icism. He seems to take pleasure in the disgraces and troubles 
of others. Lafeu tersely describes him " a shrewd knave and an 
-unhappy" 

An instance of his bitter humor occurs in the scene where Par- 
olles asks him to deliver a note to Lafeu, at the same time saying, 
in allusion to his lowness of fortune, that " he was muddied in 
fortune's moat and smells somewhat strongly of her strong dis- 
pleasure ; " a metaphorical statement which the Clown is pleased 
to take as a literal fact and thereupon to express his infinite con- 
tempt for him under an affected disgust at his malodorous condi- 
tion. 

The Clown illustrates the uncertainty of language as a vehicle 
of meaning. In a Shakespearian play, there are always passages 
and particular examples given which exemplify the special relation 
that language holds to the side of life represented. In All f s Well, 
etc., we have the world of active affairs, in which men must clearly 
understand the meaning of words used in making promises and 
other engagements ; their minds must meet in an understanding 
of the words in the same sense. This is not always easy of accom- 
plishment, both through the inadequacy of words themselves, their 
unconscious misuse, or wilful perversion. This imperfection, and 
what may be called treachery, of words is largely illustrated by 
the Clown's misconstructions ; he likes to tease by obscuring and 



' 



ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 315 

confusing matters ; as when Bertram has fled to Florence, the 
Clown enters and breaks out ; — 

" Clown. O madam, yonder is heavy news within between two soldiers and 
my young lady. 

Countess. What is the matter ? 

Clo. Nay, there is some comfort in the news, some comfort ; your son will 
not be kilVd as soon as I thought he would. 

Count. Why should he be kilVd ? 

Clo. So say I, madam, if he run away, as I hear he does ; the danger is in 
standing to 't . . Here, they come, will tell you more. For my part, I only hear 
your son was run away." 

In short, Mr. Lavatch appears to stand for two sides of the 
play ; he possesses a clear mind while he affects great confusion 
both of thought and language. 

There are other allusions to this relation of language to the un- 
derstanding, some of which it may be well to note. Thus Lafeu 
addresses Parolles : — 

" Your lord and master did well to make his recantation. 

Par. Recantation f my lord f my master f 

Lafeu. Aye ,• is it not a language I speak ? 

Par. A most harsh one : and not to be understood without bloody succeed- 
ing. My master f " 

So Bertram, being told that Parolles had sat all night in the 
stocks, asks how he had borne himself. 

" Ber. How does he carry himself ? 

Lord. I have told your lordship already : the stocks carry him. But to an- 
swer your lordship as you would be understood, he weeps like a wench," etc. 

If in ordinary cases, the intent of a speaker is difficult to be 
correctly understood through the imperfection or the deceit of 
speech, how much more difficult must it be with a man like Par- 
olles, who, as his name (paroles^ denotes, is in all he pretends 
to — courage, truth, honor, exploits — but mere empty words and 
" exterior language." He is, however, exceedingly specious, but 
Helen with unerring discernment looks through him. She says : — 

" One that goes with him. I love him for his sake, 
And yet I know him a notorious liar, 
Think him a great way fool, solely a coward ; 
Yet these fitf d evils sit so fit in him 
That they take place, when virtue's steely bones 
Look bleak in the cold wind : full oft we see 
Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly." 

Act. I. Sc. 1. 



316 ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 



ll^o> 



This speciousness, which Helen alludes to as gilding Parolles 
vices and even rendering them acceptable, is his chief character- 
istic. It manifests itself even in his outward attire, which is gay 
with " scarfs and bannerets and sword-knots," and what with this 
showy appearance and what with his wit and knowledge of the 
world, he imposes for a time upon the judgment of many, who 
take him for a valiant man, a great traveler and linguist and skill- 
ful soldier. Even Lafeu confesses that he was deceived by him 
for a time, saying, " I did think thee, for two ordinaries, to be a 
pretty wise fellow ; thou didst make tolerable vent of thy travel ; 
it might pass ; yet the scarfs and the bannerets about thee did 
manifoldly dissuade one from believing thee a vessel of too great 
a burden. I have now found thee" etc. 

To the same purport one of the French lords says to Bertram : 
" You do not know him, my lord, as we do : certain it is, he will 
steal himself into a man's favour, and, for a week, escape a great 
deal of discoveries ; but when you find Mm out, you have him 
ever after." 

Like all men of corrupt hearts, Parolles has no sound discern- 
ment of right and wrong, but measures all things by " utility and 
fortune." When Helen jestingly asks his advice (Act I. Sc. 1) 
he gives her instructions on a moral point, which are governed 
wholly by considerations of utility ; and in his letter to Diana, 
the advice contained in it turns entirely upon profit and advan- 
tage : — 

" When he swears oaths, bid him drop gold and take it." 

So utterly is he wanting in a perception of moral differences 
that he is insensible alike to honor and to shame ; so that when 
exposed and shown up to the camp he accepts the disgrace with 
a certain satisfaction, since he now can practice his meanest arts 
without fear as no contempt can touch him further. He says : — 

" Rust, sword ! cool, blushes ! and Parolles live 

Safest in shame ; being fooVd, by foolery thrive ; 
There 9 s place and means for every man alive." 

As Parolles is a personification of false and specious words and 
lives by the deceptions of language, it is poetic justice that he 
should be tricked — not by words, but by the mere semblances of 
words. The plotters against him know that he has "a smack 
of all neighbouring languages," and therefore, in order that he 



ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 317 

may think them a band of strangers, they agree to use in way 
of speech, mere unmeaning sounds, " chough's language, gabble 
enough and good enough." So when they meet and blindfold 
him he hears this jargon, and says, " I know you are the Muskos 
regiment and I shall lose my life for ivant of language" 

Bacon often speaks of words as having a speciousness in them- 
selves by which error is gilded and made to pass current; so 
likewise he speaks of sciences that are made of words and are 
incapable of works. And it would seem to be not over fanciful, 
if we view this piece as a parable play, to take Parolles, who is 
all brag and inefficiency and consequently the negative of Helen 
who is all skill and works, as a representative, from the comic 
point of view, of those wordy and incapable sciences which Bacon 
so much derides. 

Each play of Shakespeare's gives occasion to remark that one 
of the special excellences of Shakespearian art is the perfect bal- 
ance which is preserved throughout of the leading conceptions 
involved in its " form " or constructive law. These conceptions 
reappear constantly in the diction and phraseology, and impart 
to the work symmetry as well as unity of impression. Some of 
these are, of course, more prominent than the others, but there 
is always one which is specially dwelt upon, inasmuch as it is 
derived from the very central meaning of the piece. In All 's 
Well, etc., this prominent thought is " distinction," for what is a 
distinction or true difference is the question raised by the play 
out of which all its incidents grow. Therefore we shall find dis- 
tinction and its opposite indistinction, with all related and analo- 
gous terms meeting us on every page in diction, phrase, and 
thought. 

Of words affined in meaning with distinction are obviously all 
those implying division, definition, disjunction, or that which 
makes distinct or separate, as to part, to loose, etc. But since 
that which is distinct is clear to the mind or the sight, there is 
a frequent recurrence of words affined with clearness, physical or 
moral, as clean, pure, etc. Also phrases like point by pointy son 
by son, etc. 

On the other hand, with indistinction, are associated terms 
implying confusion, mixing, union, etc. Also those significant 
of indifference, as equality, evenness, identity, etc., and those 
opposed to clear, pure, as corrupt, muddy, unclean* and others. 






318 ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

The examples cited are confined to those in which the notions 
of distinction and indistinction are contained or implied in the 
thought, and are not merely words affined in signification. 

The following are instances of indistinction : — 

" It were all one 
That I should love a bright particular star," etc. 

" To stand on either part." 

" Have fought with equal fortune." 

" You and all flesh and blood." 

" Howsoe'er their hearts are severed in religion, their heads are both one" 

[This last phrase contains both indistinction and its opposite.] 

" He and his physicians are of a mind." 

" The web of our life is of a mingled yarn." 

" Both sides rogue." 

" E 'en a crow of the same nest." 

" His villainous saffron would have made all the youth of his color" etc. 

" You have made the days and nights as one." 

" Dost thou put upon me both the office of God and the devil." 

" That your Dian was both herself and love." 

" A sunshine and a hail at once." 

" For I by vow am so embodied yours, 
That she that marries you must marry me, 
Either both or none." 

" I took this lark for a bunting." 

This list is not exhaustive ; there are many other examples of 
indifference and indistinction in the piece. 

In the following is found the thought of distinction, either 
through preeminence, or division, contrast, opposition, and the 

like : — 

" Whose high respect and rich validity 
Did lack a parallel." 

" There is nothing here that 's too good for him 
But only she." 

" Thy blood and virtue contend for empire in thee." 

" Put you in the catalogue of those." 



ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 319 

" I am from humble, he from honoured name." 

" Highly fed and lowly taught." 

" The great dignity that his valour hath here acquired for him shall at home 
be encountered by a shame as ample." 

" His left cheek is a cheek of two pile and a half, 
And his right cheek is worn bare" 

" When his disgrace and he is parted." 

" So to dissever our great self and our credit." 

" Our parting is as a tortur'd body." 

There are others, but examples need not be multiplied. 

These niceties of workmanship are, perhaps, rather curious 
than important. Though they elude observation until attention 
is particularly drawn to them, they no doubt contribute to the 
pleasure of the reader by giving uniformity of tone to the work 
and strengthening the impression made by the main idea. They 
prove, moreover, that Shakespeare was boundless in his resources 
of thought and language ; that his rapidity and ease were not 
those of carelessness but of strength, and that he gave such at- 
tention to the minutest details that there is scarcely a line or a 
word that cannot be accounted for. 

The most valuable rule is one that is sure to produce the de- 
sired effect, and such rule is attainable only by the discovery of 
the true difference or formal cause, which, when invented and 
stated, is an axiom or " instrument of practice." And it is a 
part of Bacon's system to prepare " Tables of Discovery," or 
what he also calls " Tables of Rules of Practice," containing the 
axioms discovered, to which recourse can be had when needed. 
The many counsels, cautions, and precepts contained in this play 
liken it in its matter to such a table, but there are in it also 
passages and incidents which may fairly be taken as parallels and 
illustrations in the human or moral world to Bacon's process for 
making such discoveries in the physical world. 

In treating of The Merchant of Venice, it was shown that the 
notion of inquiry or quest (which is the business of a merchant) 
was constantly repeated in various forms, and was incorporated 
into the action of the piece; as in the quest of Portia, by the 
suitors, and in the trial or question on the bond ; and that the 
predominance of this conception was attributable to the comedy's 



320 ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

being a presentation of instances in which the question of true 
value was raised, corresponding (as far as is compatible with the 
dramatic form) to such a collection of materials as Bacon called 
" A Table of Inquiry and Invention." In All 9 s Well, etc. the 
poet varies his effects by taking up the other branch of the title, 
that is, Invention or Discovery as a working principle, and mak- 
ing his piece correspond to a table of discovery, in which the 
personages concern themselves in the discovery of men's charac- 
ters, with a view of estimating the degree in which they are gov- 
erned by reason, " the true difference " of man, or, in other words, 
the measure of their integrity and ability to effect ends and con- 
sequent claim to distinction. 

The question of a " true distinction " grows directly out of the 
fable, the incidents of which are consequent upon the compulsory 
marriage of Bertram, a noble of the highest rank, to Helena, 
who, notwithstanding her superior mental and moral excellence, 
is rejected by Bertram as a wife on account of her low degree. 
This obviously raises a question whether true distinction consists 
in blood and birth, as in Bertram, or in knowledge and virtue, as 
in Helen ? The answer must depend upon what is the " true 
difference " in man ; and since the aim and object of the Baconian 
philosophy is the " true difference " of things, the play offers a 
direct parallel in the moral world to such philosophy, and one so 
close, indeed, that the piece may be taken as a parable, veiling 
under its characters and incidents the principal steps in the 
Baconian process, besides exemplifying Operative Philosophy in 
that branch of it which depends upon Efficient Causes, and is 
styled Mechanics. 

But, first, the doctrines must be briefly set forth, which the 
parable both conceals and illustrates. 

Of the natures and properties of the substances that compose 
the physical world, it is the aim of Bacon's philosophy to discover 
the cause or inward law, by the working of which any particular 
nature is made what it is. To know this law or cause, or, in 
scholastic language, form, is to know a rule of practice for the 
production of the effect. 

" For what in contemplation is as the cause, in operation is as 
the rule." Nov. Org. Book I. Aph. 3. 

This cause was also called u the true difference " because the 
essential nature that was produced by its operation was defined 
by it and differenced from all other kinds. 



ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 321 

And in Valerius Terminus, probably his earliest work on " the 
interpretation of nature," Bacon says that the matter which he 
aims at " is not much other than that which they term the form 
or formal cause, or that which they call the true difference. . . . 
For Plato casteth his burden, and saith that he ' will revere him 
as a God that can truly divide and define,' which cannot be 
but by true form and differences." 

Bacon divides Operative Philosophy into Mechanics and Magic ; 
and u as Physic and the Inquisition of Efficient and Material 
causes produce Mechanics, so Metaphysic and the inquiry of 
forms produce Magic : for the inquiry of final causes is barren, 
and, like a virgin consecrated to God, produces nothing." De 
Aug. Book III. ch. v. 

This exclusion of final causes, however, does not apply " to 
sciences which have to do with human action" Nov. Org. Book 
II. Aph, 2. 

On the contrary, they are the true efficients in the moral world, 
for the end, motive, or object of desire is the cause of all volun- 
tary action. Hence a motive is called " a spring of action." 

In the affairs of men final causes or ends are almost the only 
ones which are to be considered, as it is for the sake of them 
that men form and execute their plans ; and when through policy 
they act on the minds of others by suggesting motives that impel 
them to some particular line of action, these motives, though 
final causes in themselves, are efficient causes with respect to such 
action ; in the moral world, therefore, they and the contrivances 
they give rise to are precisely analogous with efficient causes in 
the physical world, the application of which to the production of 
effects Bacon denominates Mechanics. 

But mechanics must be taken in a broad sense, and as corres- 
ponding with its Greek etymon fjLvx avr l, which is not only the same 
as the Latin machina, a machine or engine or any contrivance or 
artificial means of doing a thing (which in the moral world is any 
help or aid we induce others to give us in effecting our ends), but 
also in the plural, signifies wiles, arts, deceptions, craft, cunning, 
skill, means, resources, etc., and is affined also with words signi- 
fying counsel, advice, etc. 

There is an English derivative from the Latin machina, viz., 
machination, which has both a moral and an intellectual sense, 
21 



322 ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

for it means devices for a bad purpose. So 'practice means the 
use of good or evil arts. 

It becomes obvious as soon as stated that the play illustrates 
Mechanics or the application of causes to produce effects. To 
this end are all the tricks and stratagems that the persons of the 
play use to move others and accomplish their ends ; for instance, 
the deceptions which Helen resorts to to perform her task, or the 
plot against Parolles, or the indignities which Lafeu heaps upon 
him to test his courage ; and indeed the whole action of the piece 
is carried on by artifices and the operation of effects, affording 
many examples of " practice " or craftily working upon the mo- 
tives of men in order to influence their action to some partic- 
ular end. 

The diction of the play is largely infused with terms borrowed 
from mechanics, engineering, and the military art ; and it is curi- 
ous to observe how the dialogue introduces suggestions of effi- 
cient causes, it being remembered that an efficient is a " cause that 
moves," or as it is sometimes defined, " the cause of a cause." 
For instance, the Countess orders the Steward to write to Bertram 
that Helen had left Rousillon, in order that he may be induced to 
return ; but this she does to the further end that Helen, hearing 
of his being there, may also return herself. 

" Write, write, Rinaldo, 
To this unworthy husband of his wife. 



When haply he shall hear that she is gone, 
He will return • and hope, I may, that she, 
Hearing so much, will speed her foot again, 
Led hither by pure love" 

Act III. Sc. 4. 

Another similar instance is Helen's argument that if Bertram 
is killed in battle, she is guilty of his death, as she had driven 
him to become a soldier. 

" Whoever shoots at him, I set him there, 
Whoever charges on his forward breast 
I am the caitiff that do hold him to it ; 
And, though I kill him not, I am the cause 
His death was so effected " 

Act III. Sc. 2. 

The fertility of mind of the dramatist and his painstaking in 
small matters may be seen in the ingenuity with which he suits 



ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 323 

his rhetorical figures to the prevailing tone of the piece, — in this 
case, an exhibition of causes that produce mechanical effects, — 
of which there is a good example in the metaphor, by which 
honour is likened to a clock. 

" His honour, 
Clock to itself, knew the true minute when 
Exception bade him speak and then his tongue 
Obeyed his (i. e. the clock's) hand." 

Act I. Sc. 2. 

But besides the analogy that the play affords between physical 
Mechanics or the application of forces to work physical results, 
and what may be termed moral Mechanics, or the application of 
motives to the wills of men to direct their action, there is also 
a more general correspondence between this piece and Bacon's 
Process taken in its larger and more prominent features, that is, 
the discovery of the true difference of which process the play is 
supposed to be an allegorical image. 

The play puts before us a picture of moral progress and the 
conduct of life and affairs, all which call for a correct exercise of 
judgment on the characters of men. But the action of the judg- 
ment is the same with respect to moral as to physical facts, and 
needs the same supports in the one case as in the other. To 
supply these supports was the express end for which Bacon in- 
vented his Organum or Machine, wherewith to help the mind in 
arriving at a true judgment. It was not published until 1620, or 
four years after Shakespeare's death. Bacon, however, had been 
meditating for many years on the shape in which it was best to 
give his method to the world, and had written several treatises in 
different styles by way of experiment, such as his Valerius Termi- 
nus and the Cogitata et Visa, in which he declares an intention 
of giving an example of his Process in a Table of Inquiry and 
Invention, which he speaks of as a description of the work as it 
were visible (pperis descriptionem fere visibilem). Among these 
early writings was also a tract entitled Secundce Partis Deline- 
atio, in which is contained a sketch in general terms of the differ- 
ent steps of his Process. But none of these early attempts were 
published in Bacon's lifetime, nor did they see the light until 
1653, or about twenty-seven years after his death, when Gruter 
put out at Amsterdam a small volume containing about a score of 
these pieces. Of course, Shakespeare could never have read them 



324 ALL ? S WELL THAT ENDS TTELL. 

unless in the Latin manuscripts, and of the probability of this one 
may guess. 

The Secundce Partis Delinecitio is supposed by Spedding to 
have been composed 1606-1607, which is about the time commen- 
tators assign as the date of All 9 s Well, etc., in the mature form in 
which we now have it. In it, Bacon divides his Process into three 
parts : the first of which is the pars destruens or extirpating part, 
which is devoted to eradicating from the mind its faulty methods 
of demonstration as well as its prejudices arising from education, 
custom, and other causes, innate and adventitious. The result of 
this process is a correct exercise of judgment, and this is seen in 
Helen, as its contrary is in Bertram : the one being free from all 
delusion arising from imagination, feeling, or otherwise, while the 
other, blinded and perverted as he is, by condition of life and 
ungoverned passions, is a true picture of a mind beset by those 
warping prejudices and partialities which Bacon called M idols.*' 

The second part was the pars prceparans, the office of which 
was to gain a fair hearing for the subject by removing from the 
mind all doubts and suspicions of its importance or worthiness. 
This need not detain us. though we mav see something of this 
anxiety in the pains which Helen takes to remove from the mind 
of Widow Capulet all doubts as to the honesty and truth of her 
statement and purposes. Act III. Sc. 7 and Act IV. Sc. 4. 

The third part is the pars informens. which gives instructions 
as to the Process itself. This process was divided into three min- 
istrations : 1. To the senses. 2. To the memory. 3. To the 
reason. And in a play which depicts man as dependent on helps 
in all the transactions of his life, it is quite in keeping with its 
design to exemplify the helps of the mind also. 

The ministration to the senses was for the purpose (among 
others) of correcting its mistakes, and by instruments or experi- 
ments to supply aids when its natural powers fail : for instance, 
in the case of things imperceptible by the sense, they were to be 
urged by experiment to some effect of which the sense could take 
notice. An emotion of the mind is imperceptible by the sense 
until expressed in countenance or language : and a beautiful ex- 
ample is given of the intentional forcing of a feeling to such 
expression in the dialogue in which the Countess artfully works 
upon Helen's secret love and compels it to an outward expression 
perceptible to the sense. 



ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 325 

" Countess. You know, Helen, I am a mother to you. 
Helen. Mine honourable mistress. 
Count. Nay, a mother ; 
Why not a mother f when I said a mother 
Methought you saw a serpent. What 's in mother 
That you start at it ? I say, I am your mother. 



God's mercy, maiden ! does it curd thy blood 
To say, I am thy mother ? What 's the matter 
That this distempered messenger of wet, 
The many-colour'd Iris, rounds thine eye ? 
Why ? that you are^my daughter ? 

Hel. You are my mother, madam ; would you were 
(So that my lord, your son, were not my brother) 
Indeed my mother. 

Can 't no other 
But, I your daughter, he must be my brother ? 
Count. Yes, Helen, you might be my daughter-in-law : 
God shield you mean it not ! daughter and mother 
So strive upon your pulse : what, pale again ? 
My fear hath catch'd your fondness. Now, / see 
The mystery of your loneliness and find 
Your salt tears 1 head. Now to all sense H is gross 
You love my son : invention is asham'd 
Against the proclamation of thy passion 
To say thou dost not. For look, thy cheeks 
Confess it one to the other, and thine eyes 
See it so grossly shown in thy behaviour, 
That in their kind they speak it," etc. 

Act I. Sc. 3. 

Besides its pertinency as illustrative of " a ministration to the 
sense," this passage is an example of "practice" or working and 
discovering, and, furthermore, it exhibits in dramatic life Opera- 
tive Philosophy or Mechanics. 

Ministration to the memory embraces that most important 
feature of the Baconian process, viz., the tabulation of materials 
and particulars in some form that will enable the understanding 
more readily to act upon them. It consists of writing down the 
points of inquiry with respect to a given subject in the nature of 
Topics and forming them into tables, in which the questions shall 
be set forth in proper order and the answers duly subjoined. An 
example of this — brief of necessity, as a full table could hardly 
beantroduced into a drama, and in this case still more brief in 



/ 

\ 



326 ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

quotation, by reason of the grossness of , Parolles' mind — is given 
in the scene where Parolles is examined with regard to the forces 
and officers of the Florentine camp. 

Parolles is brought in blindfolded ; a soldier acts as examiner. 

" Sold. He calls for the tortures ; what will you say without them ? 

Par. I will confess what I know without constraint. . . . 

Sold. Our general bids you to answer what i" shall ask you out of a note. 

Par. And truly as I hope to live. 

Sold. * First demand of him how many horse the duke is strong ? ' What 
say you to that ? 

Par. Five or six thousand : but very weak and unserviceable : the troops 
are all scattered, and the commanders very poor rogues, upon my reputation 
and credit, and as I hope to live. 

Sold. Shall I set down your answer so ? 

Par. I '11 take the sacrament on 't, how and which way you will. 

Sold. Well, that 9 s set down. 

Par. Five or six thousand horse, I said — I will say true — or thereabouts 
set down, for I '11 speak truth. 

1 Lord. He is very near the truth in this. 

Ber. But I con him no thanks for 't, in the nature he delivers it. 

Par. Poor rogues, I pray you, say. 

Sold. Well, that 's set down. 

Par. I humbly thank you, sir ; a truth 's a truth, the rogues are marvel- 
lous poor. 

Sold. ' Demand of him what strength they are a-foot ? ' What say you to 
that? 

Par. By my troth, sir, if I were to live this present hour, I will tell true. 
Let me see : Spurio, a hundred and fifty ; Sebastian, as many ; Coram bus, 
as many ; Jaques, so many ; Guiltian, Cosmo, Lodowick, and Gratii, two hun- 
dred and fifty each ; mine own company ; Christopher, Vaumond, Bentii, two 
hundred and fifty each ; so that the muster-file, rotten and sound, upon my 
life, amount not to fifteen thousand poll ; half of the which dare not shake the 
snow from their cassocks, lest they shake themselves to pieces. 

Sold. Well, that 's set down. 

But we are told in the Delineatio that the topics are not merely 
to be in writing, but are to be digested according to some division, 
" for truth will sooner emerge from a division, though false, than 
it will from confusion." 

Of this necessity of a division into parts, there seems to be a 
recognition in the following passage. It is the continuation of 
Parolles' examination. The soldier who acts as Examiner still 
puts questions from his written topics : — 



ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 327 

" Sold, (reading from his notes.') i You shall demand of him whether one 
Captain Dumain be in the camp, a Frenchman ; what his reputation is with 
the Duke ; what his valour, honesty, and expertness in war ; or whether he 
thinks it were not possible, with well-weighing sums of gold, to corrupt him to 
a revolt ? What say you to this ? What do you know of it ? 

Par. I beseech you, let me answer to the particular of the intergatories : 
Demand them singly. 

Sold. Do you know this Captain Dumain ? 

Par. I know him : he was a botcher's prentice in Paris," etc. 

And so the inquiry goes on through a long scene which, though 
interspersed with remarks of bystanders in order to give it life 
and prevent its being a bald scientific examination, is yet close 
enough to one to be considered a fair dramatic imitation. 

With respect to the ministration to the reason, Bacon says that 
" ministration is chiefly to be approved that most assists the 
reason in executing its work and attaining its end. The work of 
the reason is one in nature, but in its end and use double. For 
the end of man is either to know and contemplate or to act and 
execute : wherefore the design of human knowledge is to know the 
cause of a given effect or quality in any object of thought, and 
again the design of human agency is upon a given basis of matter 
to build up and superinduce any effect or quality within the 
limits of possibility. And these designs on a close examination 
and just estimate are seen to coincide. For that which in con- 
templation stands for a cause, in operation sta?ids for a means 
or instrument. Men know through causes and operate by 
means. . . . As respects the contemplative part, to say it in a 
word, it all turns on one point, and that is no other than this, 
that a true axiom be established and the same be made con- 
junctive with other axioms." 1 Wood's Translation of Sec. Part. 
Del. 

The direction which Bacon lays down in physical philosophy 
for the formation of a rule or axiom as a help to the reason is the 
same as the advice which he gives with respect to the Wisdom of 
Business in human philosophy ; that is, to condense what experi- 
ence may teach as useful in life into an aphorism or maxim as a 
rule of practice. 

1 The corresponding" passage, Novum Organum, is as follows : " On a given body to 
generate and superinduce a new nature in the work and aim of Human Power. Of 
a given nature to discover the form or true difference ... is the aim and work of 
Human Knowledge." Nov. Org. Book II. Aph. 1. 




328 ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

And, generally, that which in human philosophy answers to the 
axioms of science derived from the discovery of the true differ- 
ences of things are the rules deduced from the unfolding of the 
principles of the reason, the true difference of man. These prin- 
ciples include the precepts of morality, policy, prudence, and the 
conduct of life generally, which are implicit in various degrees in 
the natures and characters of men, and qualify them for operat- 
ing certain effects. They constitute wisdom, morality, virtue, duty, 
policy, and not only endow their possessors with these qualities, 
but are the means of generating and superinducing them on the 
natures of other men. 

But an axiom in a play, which is meant for a parable-play, that 
exemplifies a method of producing effects, must be of so general 
a nature as to be applicable to all cases. As for physical results, 
— and such are to a certain degree embraced in the plot of the 
piece, — Bacon lays down the conditions that appertain to all rules 
for the production of material effects, saying " that man has no 
power over nature except that of motion — the power, I say, of 
putting natural bodies together or separating them, and that the 
rest is .done by nature working within. Whenever, therefore, 
there is a possibility of moving natural bodies towards one an- 
other or away from one another, men and art can do everything : 
where there is no such possibility, they can do nothing." Int. 
Globe, ch. ii. 

In the moral world, this rule must be equally general; but 
moral axioms have reference to moral effects ; they operate upon 
the motives and wills of men, and determine their course of 
action. Such an axiom is " All is well that ends well," which is 
universal in its application, and as inspiring patience, hope, and 
perseverance, and thus operating upon the minds of men, suits 
very well in a parable-play that help or ministration to the reason 
derived from an axiom or rule of practice ; and we see it is so 
used in the piece. Helen, in order to support the courage and 
hope of her coadjutors (who are all-essential to her success) cites, 
whenever they lose heart, this maxim, — 

''All 's well that ends well ; still the fine 9 s the crown ; 
Wkate'er the course, the end is the renown." 

Act V. Sc. 4. 

And again, when Widow Capulet is discouraged at not find- 
ing the King at Marseilles, and exclaims in her disappointment, 



ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 329 

" Lord, how we lose our pains ! " Helen reassures her, and revives 
her spirits with the same truth, — 

" < All 's well that ends well,' yet, 
Though time seems so adverse, and means unfit." 

The fact that the proverb is introduced twice into the dialogue, 
and in both instances to inspire hope and courage, is pretty good 
proof of an intention on the part of the dramatist of laying stress 
upon its purport and meaning. Besides that, it is introduced 
once again in the two closing lines of the play and, moreover, is 
alluded to in the Epilogue. 

Another help or ministration to the reason, which Bacon held 
to be very important, are Prerogative Instances, as he terms them, 
which are such as excel others by shedding a particular light on 
the subject of inquiry. 

Among these are Instances of Magic, by which, he says, " I 
mean those wherein the material or efficient cause is scanty or 
small as compared with the work and effect produced, so that, 
even where they are common, they seem like miracles" 

Of these, Lafeu's remarks upon the King's cure are an exam- 
ple. 

"Lafeu. They say miracles are past, and we have our philosophical persons 
to make modern and familiar things supernatural and causeless. . . . 

Par. Why, 't is the rarest argument of wonder that hath shot out in our 
latter times. 

Lafeu. To be relinquished of the artists — 

Par. So I say. 

Lafeu. Both of Galen and Paracelsus, of all the learned and authentic 
fellows — 

Par. Right, — so I say. 

Lafeu. That gave him out incurable — 

Par. Why, there 't is, so I say, too. 

Lafeu. Not to be help'd. 

Par. Right ; as ? t were a man assured of a — 

Lafeu. Uncertain life and sure death. 

Par. Just, you say well, so would I have said. 

Lafeu. I may truly say, it is a novelty in the world ... a showing of a 
heavenly effect in an earthly actor . . . the very hand of heaven. 

Par. Ay, so I say. 

Lafeu. In a most weak and debile minister great power, great transcendence" 
etc. Act II. Sc. 3. 

Other prerogative instances are termed " Polychrest or In- 
stances of General Use." They are those which relate to a variety 
of cases and occur frequently. 



330 ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

These are paralleled by the Clown's " answer to all questions " 
— and it is not infrequently the case in these plays that the most 
serious matters of philosophy are turned over to the Fool to elu- 
cidate. 

" Clown. — but for me, I have an answer will serve all men. 



Count Have you an answer of such fitness for all questions ? 

Clo. From below your duke to beneath your constable, it will fit any ques- 
tion. 

Count. It must be an answer of monstrous size that must fit all demands ? 

Clo. But a trifle neither ; in good faith, if the learned should speak truth 
of it ; here it is and all that belongs to it : ask me if I am a courtier ; it shall 
do you no harm to learn. 

Count. To be young again if we could, I will be a fool in question, hoping 
to be the wiser by your answer. I pray you, sir, are you a courtier ? 

Clo. O Lord, sir — there 's a simple putting off — more, more, a hundred 
of them. 

Count. Sir, I am a poor friend of yours that love you. 

Clo. O Lord, sir — thick, thick, spare not me. 

Count. I think, sir, you can eat more of this homely meat. 

Clo. O Lord, sir — Nay, put me to 't — I warrant you. 

Count. You were lately whipped, sir, as I think. 

Clo. O Lord, sir — spare not me. 

Count. Do you cry i O Lord, sir,' at your whipping, and *' spare not me ' ? . . • 

Clo. I ne'er had worse luck in my life in my ' O Lord, sir.' I see things 
may serve long, but not serve ever," etc. Act II. Sc. 2. 

In sum, then, what in contemplation is the cause, in operation 
is the means. And the " form " or " true difference " of things 
is that in which dwells their operative effect ; and so with men, 
their efficiency as helps in business depends upon their real na- 
tures, and these we must discover by ascertaining in what degree 
they possess the characteristic of their kind, namely, the reason as 
developed into principles and rules, and forming a character for 
virtue and knowledge. To read character is to discover " the 
true difference." And as the natures of things and their effective 
properties are discovered by trial and experiment, so are men and 
their efficiency, or their want of it, also tested by trial, as in the 
cases of Helen, Bertram, and Parolles, is notably instanced. 

Men are also known by Practice, or by artfully working upon 
the mind so as to lead to confessions and betrayals of ends and 
purposes, by which the secret character is laid bare for good or 
for evil ; and the instances of this given in the play serve also, 



ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 331 

as we have seen, for analogies to those productions of effect in the 
physical world which are styled Mechanics. 

But since the discovery of the " true difference " yields a rule 
of practice, Bacon directs that tables be formed of such rules, 
from which can be selected such means as may be required for 
operating any special effect ; they were manuals of practice, to 
which answer in the moral world manuals of morality or any col- 
lection of proverbs and precepts, by which moral effects are pro- 
duced. But as character is the " true difference " in men, a 
knowledge of character enables one to make a correct choice of 
instruments for the effecting of ends ; for a man of virtue and 
knowledge, or say of honesty and skill (which are the terms used 
in the play as adapted to its subject), through which he is quali- 
fied for some particular work, may be considered an embodied 
axiom or instrument of practice, all necessary rules and princi- 
ples being knit up in his character, and a play exhibiting person- 
ages of this practical kind, and whose efficiency is put before us 
in action, may be looked upon as a table, " as it were animate," 
of rules of practice. And, therefore, in All 's Well, etc., in which 
the highest type of effective service is the subject of inquiry, we 
find a class of personages marked by different degrees of skill 
and honesty, among whom there are two extreme types, affirma- 
tive and negative, that is, Helen and Parolles (and it must be 
remembered that in Bacon's tables there is always a chart of 
negative instances, " since negatives attached to affirmatives are 
of great use for the information of the mind "), Helen standing 
for the supreme degree of ability and virtue, as Parolles does of 
inefficiency and baseness. She is also contrasted with Bertram, 
in which case the comparison is made on intellectual grounds, her 
clear intellect and perception of true differences being foiled by 
his confusion of thought and ignorance of men. These extremes 
may be supposed to include all intermediate grades, thus carrying 
out the idea of a parable-play, which illustrates generalities and 
classes by single types and images. 

Running through the other characters there are observable dif- 
ferent grades of the same qualities that shine so conspicuously in 
Helen. Thus the Countess and Lafeu evince a high degree of 
rectitude of purpose and acquaintance with human nature ; they 
are both tolerant of youthful error, yet uncompromising in their 
scorn of dishonor. So, too, the two French lords are deeply im- 



3eS2 ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

bued with morality ; they evince great disdain of Bertram's li- 
cense, and impress us, also, with a sense of their skill as soldiers. 
In like manner Widow Capulet and Diana both manifest pride of 
character and regard for reputation, together with honorable sen- 
timents and efficient action ; and even the two gossips, Mariana 
and Violenta, exhibit sincerity of mind and knowledge of life. 
All these characters have a distinct moral tone, and show the 
same moral sentiments ; they all, moreover, give wise counsel and 
inculcate morality and prudence. 

And this characterization is strictly in accordance with Shake- 
speare's method, by which lie embodies the idea that is the in- 
forming soul of the piece, intrinsically in the characters, such 
idea in this comedy being that of a table or collection of rules of 
practice. 

Thus, in The Winter s Tale, which takes for its constructive 
principle the idea of a work of art, which is to imitate the beau- 
tiful, the characters are themselves works of art in so far as they 
have for a rule to copy moral beauty ; or in Cymbeline, which 
being a history or record of experience, the characters are sub- 
jected to trials, and are themselves records of experience ; or in 
Lear, the idea of which is that of a fable that symbolizes moral 
truth, the personages of the play are themselves symbols. In like 
manner, in All 's Well, etc., which is constructed on the idea of 
a book of proverbs, or collection of rules of conduct, the charac- 
ters are themselves in the various degrees of their virtue and 
knowledge, representatives of rules of practice. This method is 
one of the causes — and, perhaps, the main one — why these 
marvelous models of ingenuity and art have so profound a unity 
of effect. 

But honesty and skill that equip their possessor for the most 
efficient application of knowledge to the use and benefit of man's 
estate, are entitled to the highest reward and distinction. Of 
these, Helen is the image, for she renders the greatest services 
within the limits of human possibility, — rescuing from death by 
her physical science the King, who had been abandoned by his 
most leai'ned physicians, and reclaiming by her moral knowledge 
Bertram from vice to a virtuous life, — and, therefore, to her 
must the highest distinction be awarded as to one possessing in 
the greatest degree that wisdom and goodness which in man is 
" the true difference." 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 335 

was derived from satura, a Roman word, which signifies full and 
abundant, and full also of variety, 'T is thus, says Dacier, that 
we lay a full color, when the wool has taken the whole tincture 
and drunk in as much of the dye as it can receive. According 
to this derivation from Satur comes Satura or satira. Satura 
(as I have formerly noted) is an Adjective and relates to the 
word laux, which is understood. And this laux, in English a 
charger or large Platter, was yearly filled with all sorts of fruits, 
which were offered to the Gods at their festivals as the first Gath- 
erings. 

" This word satura has been afterward applied to many sorts of 
mixtures, as Festus calls it a kind of olla or hotch-potch, made of 
several sorts of meats. . . . JFrom hence it might be probably 
conjectured that the discourses or satires of Ennius, Lucilius and 
Horace, as we now call them, took their name, because they are 
full of various matters, and are also written on various sub- 
jects." 

An eminent modern scholar has the same explanation. " The 
Latin satira takes its name in consequence of the medley of verses 
of different metres and topics of various natures* which the earlier 
writers of satire were accustomed to employ. Varro even mixed 
prose with poetry and called the pieces satirce " (Anthon's Sail. 
Bell. Jug. § 24, note). 

The word farce is applied to a play by similar analogies. It is 
from the Latin farcire, to stuff, to cram. " With respect to farce 
the noun, it is said by Menage to be a mixture or medley of vari- 
ous sorts of viands and applied to a species of comedy, because it 
is stuffed or filled with a variety of things or with incidents of 
various kinds" (Rich. Diet, in v.). 

In keeping with this " form " or idea of satire being a pro- 
miscuous collection of things, the poet in writing this grandest of 
satires and weightiest of farces, renders it a medley of love, war, 
politics, poetry, rhetoric, logic, civil and moral philosophy, to say 
nothing of satire itself and various other matters. In fact, the 
play contains passages that may be taken as illustrations of all the 
main branches of Learning appertaining to the Philosophy of 
Man as laid down by Bacon in De Augmentis. Such a variety 
of topics embracing different and opposite divisions of the same 
subject, give the picture the effect of disorder and confusion, to 
which additional force is lent by its being laid upon a background 
of system, unity, and rule. 



336 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 

The love story of Troilus and Cressida is drawn from Chaucer ; 
but the main action of the piece has reference to the Trojan war ; 
and the satire of the play is aimed at the Homeric or heroic ideal 
as typical of all false ideals. The parody could have no point for 
a reader unacquainted with the Iliad. The chief characters, inci- 
dents, and allusions are taken from Homer, but in order to render 
the plot more flexible and better adapted to the elucidation of the 
philosophical principles which — to use the language of the pre- 
face — " are stuft in it," and at the same time to avoid the charge 
of laying a sacrilegious hand upon the father of poetry, the play- 
writer went for portions of his plot to the tales of the Trojan war 
as related by the mediaeval romancers after Dyctes or Dares, or 
as existing in the black-letter of Lydgate or Caxton. In these 
romances, the Homeric heroes are converted into knights and bar- 
ons of feudal chivalry ; and, as in the old pageants the most sa- 
cred characters and incidents of Holy Writ are unwittingly belit- 
tled and made ridiculous by the simplicity and ignorance of both 
actors and audience, so in these stories, the stately heroes of the 
Iliad are unconsciously travestied and sunk to the level of the com- 
monplace by the modern air that is given to their manners. This 
comedy, if it may be called such, handles the famous epos in the 
same spirit, carrying, however, the burlesque one step further; and 
while preserving the outline of the Homeric prototypes sufficiently 
to give the characters a mock dignity, it yet contrasts their boast- 
ful pretensions with the meanness and vulgarity of their motives ; 
and by substituting for heroic elevation and greatness of soul 
mere bodily bulk and ridiculous vainglory, places them in the 
light of a serio-comic caricature. They are represented as it were 
in pageant, and are touched with something of the ludicrous effect 
produced by the magniloquence of " The Nine Worthies" when 
personated in pasteboard armor by the country curate and school- 
master. 

A satire is a species of didactic poetry, and this satirical play is 
didactic throughout ; it makes no appeal to the heart and feelings, 
but addresses itself to the mind and instructs us through the re- 
flective faculties solely. Its aim is not to make us more charitable 
but more wise, and to purge us of error by ridiculing vice, rather 
than by awakening sympathy with virtue. And inasmuch as it 
judges the heroic by the moral ideal, which latter is that only 
which should furnish the rule of life, and, furthermore, as the 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 337 

English drama itself had its origin in " Mysteries " and " Mo- 
ralities," the very aim of which was moral instruction, the writer 
of the play seems to have kept this fact in mind and to have 
made his work a moral play on a grand scale (with Thersites for 
Vice) in which the personages, though not embodiments of ab- 
stract qualities as in the old u Moralities," — such, for instance, 
as " Drift," " Unthrift," and " Shift " of " Common Conditions," — 
yet are representative of certain characteristics already predeter- 
mined and proverbially attached to their names ; as Agamemnon, 
Achilles, Ulysses, Nestor, Hector, Troilus, and Cressida stand re- 
spectively for rule, pride, policy, experience, courage, truth, and 
falsehood, while the name of the go-between Pandar has given 
both a verb and a noun to the language. 

Before considering the play in its allegorical meaning or as an 
" illustrative example," its moral basis will be briefly set forth, 
from which a better judgment perhaps can be formed of its dra- 
matic scope. 

Since, instead of life itself, the play dramatizes an abstract of 
life, seen through a literary medium, it presents a picture of social 
man as vague and general as is consistent with any dramatic rep- 
resentation at all. Its ostensible subject is War, out of which 
grows the heroic ideal, and inasmuch as War originates in the 
desires and passions that have their centre in self and tend to 
disunite men, the principles on which the unanimity of Society 
depends and which form the moral ideal are substructed as a base 
or background to the action of the piece ; and as war, again, is 
carried on between different nations, such principles must reach 
beyond merely political or municipal regulations and be broad 
enough for Human Intercourse at large. These principles are 
truth and justice, which are ideas of reason, on which are founded 
those moral rules, which, by restraining the selfish appetites and 
desires, and directing them to their proper objects, tend to pre- 
vent violence and secure peace and concord among men. The 
play, therefore, views man in relation to Mankind or the species, 
which, embracing a vast number of individuals of totally differ- 
ent personalities, binds them all up in one whole by the common 
attribute of reason. Thus the piece treats of the logical man — 
man as " a rational animal." This distinguishing characteristic 
of man, the reason, is the fountain of moral ideas and practical 
rules ; it discerns the one in the many ; binds up the manifold in 
22 



338 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 

unity by force of an idea ; forms species and genera by classify- 
ing objects according to their common attributes, to which classes 
it gives names, thus creating universals that make up the bulk of 
language and furnish the indispensable instruments of logic ; and 
on these accounts it is the source of system, unity, and rule. 
Owing to the moral identity of man, that which is right and true 
for one is right and true for all, and intercourse becomes possible 
on the ground of universal consent and a common rule of action. 
This rule, applicable alike to all mankind, is the idea or image of 
virtue and wisdom, which, in some degree, every man carries in 
his breast as the standard of moral excellence. To this idea the 
ideal holds the same relation that the example does to the rule ; 
it is an archetype which serves as a model for imitation. " Virtue 
and wisdom," says the illustrious Kant, " in their perfect purity 
are ideas. But the wise man of the Stoics is an ideal, that is 
to say, a human being existing only in thought and in complete 
conformity with the idea of wisdom. As the idea provides a rule, 
so the ideal serves as an archetype for the perfect and complete 
determination of the copy. Thus the conduct of this wise and 
divine man serves as a standard of action, with which we may 
compare and judge ourselves, although the perfection it demands 
can never be attained by us." The ideal is, consequently, the 
Supreme Rule and End of life, which comprises all other rules 
and ends under it ; and in proportion as man conforms his con- 
duct to this exemplar, he is exalted in character and worthy of 
honor and fame. Like the central form, which embodying the 
universal in the particular, constitutes the ideal of physical beauty 
to the supreme perfection of which art can never attain, but of 
which the completest examples are found in those masterpieces, 
which furnish the canons of criticism, the ideal of Humanity, 
representing the species or "form " of universal man, and alike 
removed from all extremes, holds that exact centre in which truth 
and justice reside, and though unattainable in full perfection, 
finds signal exemplifications in the heroes and benefactors who 
illustrate the race and stand as patterns of the goodness and 
greatness of human nature. 

" In all things," says Bacon, " there are nobler natures to the 
dignity and excellence whereof inferior natures aspire as to their 
sources and origins. So it was not unfitly said of men ' that they 
have a fiery vigour and a heavenly origin,' for the assumption 



TROILUS AND CKESSIDA. 339 

or approach of man to the Divine or Angelical nature is the per- 
fection of his form." 

These nobler natures or exemplars are the standards of com- 
parison by which the excellence of each thing in its respective 
kind is judged, and in proportion as such excellence approximates 
this perfection of form it is entitled to approbation and becomes 
a pattern and a rule. 

The relation of man, therefore, to mankind or universal man is 
a logical or mental one ; it is the same as a relation to the uni- 
versal reason, and exists only in the judgment and opinion, good 
or bad, formed by the World or Public, according to a common 
standard, upon the words and deeds of every individual. And in 
this the poet is true to his usual method ; since, whatever be the 
form of moral force that he adopts as the background of a piece, 
it is always representative of retributive justice, from which pro- 
ceed alike the rule and the punishment for its violation. But the 
rule in this instance is the moral ideal, which is elaborated from 
the ideas of reason common to all men and forms the standard of 
judgment ; and it is this reason that finds voice in public opinion 
with regard to the wisdom and virtue, or the ignorance and folly 
exhibited in the actions of men ; in the one case conferring fame, 
in the other disgrace. 

What, then, is the duty involved in this relation of man to uni- 
versal man, that is, to the species or idea or form of man ; or the 
ideal of Humanity, or the exemplar of virtue, or the rule of con- 
duct — for all these are equivalents? Evidently that of discipline 
and the amendment of the mind, in order to unfold the ideas 
of reason, give accuracy to its conceptions, purge it of error and 
prejudice, exalt the standard of judgment, and thus insure a higher 
moral practice and progress towards an ideal perfection. By such 
discipline and imitation of the ideal, men may themselves become 
patterns and rules for imitation and teach others as well by ex- 
ample as by precept. 

But so darkened is the judgment by the appetites and desires 
originating in hot blood and the grosser qualities of man's nature 
that the Exemplar of Good is but dimly seen by most minds, and 
by some probably not at all. Instead of the moral, men worship 
the heroic ideal. And so far are the ends that men pursue from 
being consonant with the ideas of reason, that give unity to 
Society, they are the variable products of appetite, imagination, or 



340 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 

passion, and are the source of rivalry and discord. They are the 
growth of sensual desires, false valuations, depraved judgments, 
vain imaginations, fallacious opinions, — such as pleasure, beauty, 
riches, glory, and the like. To be more true and just, more wise 
and good than others, excites the ambition of few ; but to be ac- 
knowledged superior in personal qualities, in strength, and beauty, 
and courage, to be more powerful and renowned, — these awaken 
emulation and fill the world with envy and strife. 

It is these false ends and aims, the brood of inordinate desires, 
and especially the false standards by which men judge of the 
worth of the objects of their pursuit that awaken the ridicule or 
the indignation of the satirist, who in this play subjects military 
glory and the heroic ideal to the standard of the true Exemplar 
of Good, thus holding it up, notwithstanding its assumed dignity, 
as absurd and ridiculous. 

Of the necessity of discipline in order to prevent the ascend- 
ancy of the animal nature in man, Thersites, in his coarse way, 
reminds us when cursing Patroclus : — 

" Thyself upon thyself ! The common curse of mankind, folly and igno- 
rance, be thine in great revenue ! Heaven bless thee from a tutor and discipline 
come not near thee ! Let thy blood be thy direction till thy death ! then if she 
that lays thee out says that thou art a fair corse, I '11 be sworn and sworn 
upon 't, she never shrouded any but lazars. Amen." Act II. Sc. 3. 

To the Supreme Rule, which is the fountain of justice and the 
law of laws, are subordinated all other rules, whether moral or 
civil. These last, like the Supreme Rule, must partake of uni- 
versality and be derived from a wide observation and knowledge 
of men and affairs. " The experience of one man's life cannot 
furnish examples for the events of one man's life." Such exam- 
ples must be gathered from the lives and actions of men in gen- 
eral as recorded in books. This is Learning, and it is Learning 
only which is sufficiently comprehensive to afford precedents for 
the various occasions of life. " The wit of one man," says Bacon, 
" can no more countervail learning than one man's means can 
hold way with a common purse." By the study of man and his 
affairs, as set forth under the greatest diversity of circumstances 
in books and other records of human action, rules may be framed 
for wise conduct in all emergencies. Such rules are largely ex- 
emplified in the proverbs, parables, and maxims which are cur- 
rent among all peoples, and are expressive of the wisdom and 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 341 

common sense of mankind. In such apophthegms and sayings 
this comedy abounds. There is scarce a critic who, in treating of 
this play, has not called attention to the great number of moral 
and political truths it contains, and, in fact, these are but partial 
and fragmentary expressions of that perfect virtue and wisdom 
which is the fundamental idea of the piece. The discipline of the 
mind, however, together with the study of human nature and the 
deduction from it of rules and laws, is Philosophy, and Philosophy 
has, therefore, been styled the guide of life. 

Of rule, as the basis of system and the exponent of justice, we 
find instances in the discussions of the Grecian camp (Act I. 
Sc. 3), and the debate of the Trojan council (Act II. Sc. 3), the 
one being fraught with political, the other with moral, wisdom. 
In the former, Ulysses, in a masterly speech, traces the weakness 
and inefficiency of the Greeks to faction and " neglect of the 
specialty of rule" and, in the latter, Hector sweeps away as re- 
pugnant to " the law of nature and of nations " the sophisms of 
Paris and Troilus, whereby they seek to maintain the wrongful 
holding of Helen on the ground that honor demands it. 

The true idea of manhood being derived from the reason, which 
is the differentia, to use a logical term, which constitutes man a 
species and distinguishes him from other animals, the heroic or 
false ideal, which in accordance with the broad and general scale 
of the play, is presented in the heroes Ajax and Achilles in its 
most gross and material shape, is but an enhancement to the 
highest degree of man's animal nature, — such as his physical 
bulk, strength, and appetites. Of dignity of mind and moral 
elevation, this ideal is completely discharged. The play through- 
out suggests the antithesis of mind and matter, of reason and 
brute force, and shows that as in Nature the forces of matter, if 
ungoverned by law or u form," would rush with blind impetus to 
chaos ; so in man, his animal propensities and appetites, when 
unchecked by reason and rule, that is, by "form" are carried by 
their own unguided strength to self-destruction. 

"Then every thing includes itself in power, 
Power into will, will into appetite, 
And appetite, a universal wolf, 
So doubly seconded with will and power, 
Must make, perforce, a universal prey, 
And, last, eat up himself" k 



i 



342 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 

" It is due to justice," says Bacon, " that man is a god to man, 
and not a wolf" 

The desire of superiority, which is strikingly manifested even 
in the lower animals, pervades every department of human life. 
From the games of children to the shock of armies there is 
throughout a spirit of emulation and a struggle for supremacy. 
Aiming at the exercise of power over others, it is that desire of 
the heart which needs specially to be checked by reason, that is, 
by rule. Its direct tendency is to engender rivalry and strife. 
Justice must interpose between the strong and the weak, and 
equalize men by giving each his own in the degree of his rights. 
Without this there could be no consent nor unanimity among 
men, and consequently no society. 



' Strength should be lord of imbecility, 
And the rude son should strike his father dead : 
Force should be right ; or, rather, right and wrong 
(Between whose endless jar justice resides) 
Should lose their names, and so should justice too. ,, 






Ulrici maintained that the poet's object in Troilus and Ores- 
sida was to judge the Greek idea of human greatness by the 
archetypal standard of Christianity. This opinion has not escaped 
reprehension at the hands of that school of criticism which scoffs 
at the supposition that the writer of the Shakespearian plays had 
any design beyond turning off a literary job for as much money 
and with as little trouble as possible. But if we note that the 
spring of action in almost every character is emulation, and that 
the standard of comparison which the characters make use of to 
estimate the superiority of one over another is the low one of 
physical strength and animal courage, which standard itself must 
be judged by the higher one of the moral ideal, of which in the 
play satire is the voice, it will appear that Ulrici is right, except 
that the view of the satirist is by no means confined to Greek 
herodom and Greek civilization. The comedy is quite as much, 
if not more, a satire upon the burly warriors and rude chivalry 
portrayed in the pages of Froissart than upon the immorality of 
the Homeric poem or the heroism of the fabulous ages of Greece. 
It is a satire upon war and the spirit of war in general, — war 
which, abnegating reason, places the decision of right and wrong 
upon superiority of physical force. Grant the principle of might 
over right, and Troilus and Cressida shows that the result is 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 343 

inevitable chaos and imbecility. But most especially does it ridi- 
cule that love of fame and military glory that is only to be 
obtained by the indulgence of a spirit of revenge and the slaughter 
of multitudes of human beings. The poet does not restrict to a 
particular age or race his philosophical satire, which, in its uni- 
versality, is applicable to all periods and peoples, and is no less 
instructive with regard to the events, passions, and sentiments of 
the present day than to those of three thousand years ago. 

Troilus and Cressida, being a parody of the Homeric heroes, 
who, however elevated by a contempt of death and love of glory, 
are mere gladiators, priding themselves solely on their strength 
and ferocity, the play, with grave irony, assumes that physical 
superiority displayed and glory won in battle are the supreme 
good and aim of life. Greeks and Trojans meet during the truce 
and vie with each other in courtesy ; yet the pleasures of hospi- 
tality are pronounced insipid compared with the rapture of strife. 
Hector and Nestor exchange the warmest and friendliest greet- 
ings ; coupled, however, with regrets that the great age of the 
latter deprives them both of the gratification of seeking each 
other's life in deadly combat. 

In like manner are the hollow courtesies of chivalry ridiculed 
and the inhumanity that lurks in martial glory exposed in the 
meeting of iEneas and Diomed. 

" JEneas. In humane gentleness 

Welcome to Troy ! now by Anchises' life 
Welcome indeed ! By Venus' hand I swear 
No man alive can love in such a sort 
The thing he means to kill more excellently. 
Dio. We sympathize. Jove ; let JEneas live 
A thousand complete courses of the sun 
If to my sword his fate be not the glory ! 
But in mine emulous honour let him die 
With every joint a wound ; and that to-morrow." 

Thus the notions of friendliness and hospitality are forced into 
farcical combination with those of enmity and inhumanity. 

An excellent instance of the judgments formed according to the 
false ideal, which is ironically taken as the true standard, is fur- 
nished by the dispute between Pandarus and Cressida with refer- 
ence to the comparative merits of Troilus and Hector. It will be 
perceived that the rule which they both use to estimate whether 



344 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 

the one or the other is " the better man" makes no reference to 
the moral or higher qualities of man's nature. 

" Pandarus. He '11 lay about him to-day, I can tell them that : and there is 
Troilus will not come far behind him ; let them take heed of Troilus : I can 
tell them that, too. 

Cressida. What, is he angry too ? 

Pan. Who, Troilus ? Troilus is the letter man of the two. 

Cress. O Jupiter ! there 's no comparison. 

Pan. What, not between Troilus and Hector ? Do you know a man if you 
see him ? 

Cress. Ay ; if I ever saw him before, and knew him. 

Pan. Well, I say, Troilus is Troilus. 

Cress. Then you say as I say, for, I am sure, he is not Hector. 

Pan. No, nor Hector is not Troilus, in some degrees. 

Cress. 'T is just to each of them ; he is himself. 

Pan. Himself ? Alas, poor Troilus ! I would he were. 

Cress. So he is. 

Pan. — Condition, I had gone barefoot to India. 

Cress. He is not Hector. 

Pan. No, he is riot himself. Would 'a were himself ! . . . No, Hector is 
not a better man than Troilus. 

Cress. Excuse me. 

Pan. He is elder. 

Cress. Pardon me, pardon me. 

Pan, The other 's not come to 't ; you shall tell me another tale when the 
other 's come to 't. Hector shall not have his wit this year. 

Cress. He shall not need it if he have his own. 

Pan. Nor his qualities. 

Cress. No matter. 

Pan. Nor his beauty. 

Cress. 'T would not become him ; his own 9 s better. 

Pan. You have no judgment, niece. Helen herself swore the other day, that 
Troilus for a brown faror (for so 'tis, I must confess) not brown, neither — 

Cress. No, but brown. 

Pan. Faith, to say truth, brown and not brown. 

Cress. To say the truth, true and not true. 

Pan. She praised his complexion above Paris. 

Cress. Why, Paris hath colour enough. 

Pan. So he has. 

Cress. Then Troilus should have too much : if she praised him above, his 
complexion is higher than his ; he having colour enough and the other higher, is 
flaming & praise for a good complexion. . . . 

Pan. Why, he is very young, and yet will he within three pounds lift as much 
as his brother Hector." 

In order to illustrate the profound philosophical truths which 
he has wrapped up in this play, the poet puts prominently for- 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 345 

ward the disorganization of the Grecian camp, — a feature which 
he borrows from the Iliad. Of system or degree, that is, of a 
whole made up of parts in graduated ranks and held in unity by 
law, there is no better type than an army or host of warriors, con- 
federated for a common purpose, organized into one corps and 
subjected to one head, by whose rule and intelligence the whole 
body is governed. By such unanimity, the highest degree of co- 
operation is secured. But even in war, which is the ultima ratio 
regum, in other words, the renouncement of all rationality and 
the assertion that truth and justice are necessarily on the side of 
the strong battalions, the rule of efficient action must be drawn 
from the reason. Discipline — which implies both precept and 
practice — is indispensable to success ; wisdom in council must 
be united with skill in action, and he is the ablest captain whose 
plans most nearly prefigure the event and " organize victory." 

If in the ordinary pursuits of civil life emulation is every- 
where apparent, particularly in the envy and detraction that fol- 
low on the heels of excellence, there is still wider scope for its 
activity in the opportunities that war affords for the display of 
personal superiority. But distinction in battle begets vainglory, 
which, deriding policy and overvaluing mere force, arrogates 
undue importance of the individual with respect to the system 
and of the irrational with respect to the rational faculties. The 
two leading heroes, Achilles, " the bulk," and Ajax, " the lub- 
ber," are portrayed as huge bovine men, but little more rational 
than " draught oxen," whom, as Thersites says, the craftier Nestor 
and Ulysses " yoke together and make plough up the war." Their 
overweening pride and arrogance rest simply on their ability " to 
pun each other to shivers with their fists as a sailor breaks a bis- 
cuit." These men 

" Count wisdom as no member of the war, 
Forestall prescience, and esteem no act 
But that of hand." 

In this dramatic satire, therefore, the Grecian camp is repre- 
sented as disorganized by the withdrawal of Achilles from the 
contest, not, as in Homer, from motives of resentment, but from 
a spirit of faction and insubordination, originating in arrogance 
and self-will, engendered and fed by the applause and renown 
won by personal prowess in battle. Such pride rests, of necessity, 



346 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 



on a superiority of physical and fighting qualities, of corporal 
parts, of bulk, muscle, and brute force ; it is an exaltation of the 
animal over the rational, and this alone would justify the poet in 
a comic handling of the subject. 

Of an organized army, the minds and wills of all the parts 
must be collected and concentrated in one head, which, as repre- 
sentative of the whole, is called " the general" as in the following 
lines, — 

" 'Fore all the Greekish heads, which with one voice 
Call Agamemnon head and general" 

Ulysses, commenting upon the insubordination of Achilles and 
Ajax, ridicules the pride these animal men take in their rude 
strength, and portrays the effect of the predominance of faction 
over rule and system, — or degree, as it is termed in the play. 

" Take but degree away, untune that string, 
And hark ! what discord follows ! each thing meets 
In mere oppugnancy : the bounded waters 
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores, 
And make a sop of all this solid globe : 
Strength should be lord of imbecility, 
And the rude son should strike his father dead ; 
Force should be right ; or rather right and wrong 
(Between whose endless jar justice resides) 
Should lose their names, and so should justice, too." 

With the supremacy of the animal nature might becomes right, 
and all organized system is impossible. The absurdity, there- 
fore, of bestowing the highest honors of herodom upon those 
whose tendencies are to subvert all rule and order, and whose 
superiority is only in such qualities as most liken men to beasts, 
is patent. 

Such appear to be the philosophical principles that under- 
lie the plot in its broader scope ; but how do they harmo- 
nize with or find representation in the characters and conduct 
of Troilus and Cressida, the two personages that give name to the 
piece? Such a title is a misnomer, unless these characters can 
be found to be based upon principles analagous, if not identical, 
with those so conspicuously illustrated in the factious disorganiza- 
tion of the Grecian camp. But the love story of Troilus and 
Cressida is in essence and idea illustrative of the same principles 
that underlie the political philosophy of Nestor and Ulysses. 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 347 

Organization depends upon the constancy and fidelity of each 
part to the whole, and every disorganizing principle must involve 
disloyalty and falsehood. Now, Troilus and Cressida are types 
respectively of these principles ; nay, more, their betrothment and 
mutual pledge of vows place them in the light of a wedded 
couple. Such a compact is one most strictly dependent upon the 
consent of each part, and its fidelity to a common bond. It is 
plain, therefore, that both in the union and the contrast between 
Troilus and Cressida, is found as well the principle on which 
organization depends as that by which it is destroyed. 

These characters represent also respectively the ascendency of 
the rational and of the animal side of human nature. Troilus's 
love is accompanied by a sense of duty, which gives strength to 
, his vows and permanency to his attachment. Like all lovers, he 
idealizes the object of his passion, yet he unites with his fancy an 
unalterable truth, — 

" Never did young man fancy 
With so eternal and so fix } d a soul. 91 

II But the passion of Cressida is a thing of the eye, and changes 
i with the objects of the eye. Her inconstancy is attributable to a 
J predominance of animal impulse, and warmth of temperament 
a over truth. 

" Minds, sway'd by eyes, are full of turpitude." 

The characters of this comedy do not need any detailed analy- 
/ sis. They were furnished to the dramatist ready-made by Ho- 
mer, and are so well known that had the dramatic copies made 
any very wide departure from their originals, they would be con- 
demned at once for want of truth. They are all analyzed for us 
by the poet ; that is, they analyze each other. But his aim, so far 
as the characters are simply dramatic, seems to have been to pre- 
sent the Homeric heroes in broad outline, and, at the same time, 
in broad caricature. To effect this, it was necessary to preserve 
the likeness ; this he does, though with such modifications as suit 
his special purposes. They are unidealized, and have a thor- 
oughly modern tone and air ; they are modern men, stuffed out 
to heroic dimensions, and are somewhat cumbrous and unwieldy 
in their movements. They seem to have been purposely left vague 
in outline, in order to be in keeping with the tone' of generality 
that pervades the piece, yet the likeness to their Homeric proto- 



348 TROILUS AND CRESS1DA. 

types is sufficient to give them a strong parodic effect by prompt- 
ing a comparison between them and their epic originals. No 
doubt they would have some significance for a reader unac- 
quainted with the Iliad, but such a reader would derive but com- 
paratively little enjoyment from the play. How vague and gen- 
eral, for instance, is the delineation of Agamemnon ! The name 
makes the character ; we hear the name, and the mind reverts to 
the Homeric hero. He has but two speeches of any consequence, 
but in neither of these is there anything to individualize the char- 
acter or show us the man. Our notions of what the character is 
meant to be are taken from our reminiscences of the Homeric 
u king of men," who suffers, however, in his translation a sad loss 
of dignity. The characters are logical abstracts ; subjects with 
attributes or additions ; wholes made up of parts. The air of 
vagueness that is thrown over them proceeds in a great measure 
from the numerous general reflections that are introduced into 
their discourse and dialogue. These abstract truths fit one mouth 
as well as another. Thus the comments of the " beef-witted " 
Achilles on the fickleness of Fortune and of the love that leans 
upon it, would be quite as characteristic had they fallen from the 
lips of the wise Ulysses or the experienced Nestor. So, too, with 
the character of Ulysses, who embodies " the wise man," or at least 
the politician's idea of " the wise man ; " it is purely intellectual ; 
he exhibits no emotion, and we see in him only a cool-headed politi- 
cian and profound observer of mankind. Others of the charac- 
ters are more sharply cut, particularly those which do not belong 
to Homer, as Troilus, Cressida, and Pandarus ; still, these seem 
to be abstracts of character in which only the broader features are 
delineated, without much light and shade or complexity of detail. 

From the foregoing analysis it appears that this comedy exhibits 
man in his relations to his species or Mankind, of which relations 
War is a violation. These relations, which are inherent in man's 
nature as a rational and social being, determine the rules of hu- 
man intercourse, and a knowledge of these rules is moral and 
civil philosophy ; the play is, consequently, a picture of War on a 
background of Philosophy, and at once suggests the antithesis of 
matter and mind, for war is carried on by material agencies and 
brute force, while philosophy deals with universals and abstrac- 
tions, which exist only in the sphere of thought. 

The relation of man to universal man can be regarded both 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 351 

so perspicuous nor true examples so apt" De Aug. Book II. 
ch. xiii. 

The play-writer seems to have been familiar with this doctrine, 
for while securing the necessary background of philosophy and 
intellectuality on which to sketch his gross and animal heroes, he 
makes his incidents and dialogue examples of various branches of 
Learning, which, moreover, conform to the divisions and sub- 
divisions of the sciences as laid down by Bacon in De Augmentis, 
in those chapters in which he treats of the Philosophy of Man ; 
such incidents and characters being shaped also so as to exem- 
plify the science of Rule (the fundamental idea of the piece) 
which when applied to man is moral and civil philosophy. 

It may be observed, also, that the literary form on which this 
extraordinary piece of " parabolical poesy " is founded, and which 
is intimately, though ironically, blended with it, is the epos, of 
which the essential idea is to idealize physical heroism and re- 
count wars between nations, thus bringing into view the human 
species and the worship of the heroic ideal ; whereas the true 
"form " of man is the soul or reason, through which only is real 
greatness to be achieved. But the ideas of reason are unfolded 
by discipline, which proceeds from an instinctive desire for wis- 
dom and knowledge, and is the origin of learning of all kinds ; 
and this being the means of attaining true fame, occasions, ac- 
cording to the poet's usual method, the introduction of a large 
number of the various divisions and branches of science into the 
piece. 

Bacon prefaces his consideration of the rational sciences with 
the following passage : — 

" That part of human philosophy which regards Logic is less 
delightful to the taste and palate of most minds, and seems but a 
net of subtlety and spinosity. For as it is truly said that ' know- 
ledge is the food of the mind,' so in their choice and appetite for 
this food most men are of the taste and stomach of the Israelites 
in the desert, that would fain have returned to the flesh-pots, and 
were weary of manna, — which, though it were celestial, yet 
seemed less nutritive and comfortable. And in like manner, those 
sciences are (for the most part) best liked which have some in- 
fusion of flesh and blood, — such as civil history, morality, policy, 
— about which men's affections, praises, fortunes turn and are 
occupied. But this same J dry light ' parches and offends most 



352 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 

men's soft and watery natures. But to speak truly of things as 
they are in worth, rational knowledges are the keys of all other 
arts." De Aug. Book V. ch. 1. 

The remarks made in the foregoing passage upon the distaste- 
ful nature to most minds of logic, might, perhaps, be extended to 
morality and policy, although Bacon makes an exception in their 
favor ; but morality and policy, when handled in the abstract, are 
to the general reader exceedingly unattractive, and, therefore, as 
this analysis is about to show, or attempt to show, how this " net 
of subtlety and spinosity " is put before our eyes in dramatic 
action, the above passage, with which even Bacon thought it 
worth while to prepare the mind of his reader, is quoted as a 
notice and a warning that what follows is necessarily taken up 
with the abstractions of logic and ethics ; and, on this account, 
the examples cited will be those only which particularly refer to 
what is peculiar and original in Bacon's system. With respect to 
these, however, it may be premised that they will be found to be 
exemplified in the action and expounded in the dialogue of the 
piece with the greatest force and copiousness of thought and 
brilliancy of expression. 

Of moral philosophy, which Bacon denominates the Culture or 
Georgics of the mind, there are, according to his division, four 
heads, viz. : — 

1. The Exemplar of Good, — which may be considered with 
respect to Bacon's system the standard of moral health. 

2. The character of the disposition, or the constitution of the 
patient. 

3. The affections of the mind, or its diseases. 

4. The remedies applicable. 

But Bacon's own language must be quoted : " The doctrine of 
the use and objects of the faculties of the human soul has two 
parts, and those well known, and by general agreement admitted, 
namely, Logic and Ethic. . . . Logic discourses of the Under- 
standing and Reason : Ethic of the Will, Appetite, and Affec- 
tions." De Aug. Book V. ch. 1. 

Ethic he divides into two principal parts, " the one of the Ex- 
emplar and platform of good, the other of the Regiment and Cul- 
ture of the mind. The one describing the nature of good, the 
other prescribing rules hoio to accommodate the will of man there- 
unto:' De Aug. Book VII. ch. 1. 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 353 

The Exemplar or image of good in the supreme degree thereof 
is but that ideal of virtue and wisdom of which mention has been 
repeatedly made as the fundamental principle of the play, or 
rather as the standard, which exists in the mind of the reader, 
and is used by him in judging of the characters and morality of 
the play just as he would use the same in judging of men and 
their conduct in real life. In fact, it is the practical reason in its 
highest and purest state of discipline and development. 

Bacon commends the ancients for their admirable discourses on 
the exemplar of Good, or " the forms of Virtue and Duty," but 
complains that they nowhere teach how these excellent ends are 
to be obtained. 

" These writers," he says, " set forth good and fair copies, and 
accurate draughts and portraitures of good, virtue, duty, and fe- 
licity, as the true objects for the will and desires of man to aim 
at. But though the marks be excellent and well placed, how a 
man may best take his aim at them, that is, by what method and 
course of education the mind may be trained and put in order 
for the attainment of them, they pass over altogether, or slightly 
and unprofitably." 

His own philosophy being altogether practical, and only valued 
so far as it was beneficial to man, he proceeds to explore the 
nature of good, and thus discourses : — 

" But if the philosophers, before they had come to the popular 
and received notions of virtue and vice, pain and pleasure and 
the rest, had stayed a little longer upon the enquiry concerning 
the roots of good and evil and the strings of those roots, they had 
given, in my opinion, a great light to those questions which fol- 
lowed, and especially if they had consulted with the nature of 
things as well as moral axioms they had made their doctrines less 
prolix and more profound, which being by them in part omitted 
and in part handled with much confusion, I will briefly resume 
and endeavour to open and cleanse the fountains of morality 
before I come to the knowledge of the culture of the mind which 
I set down as deficient." De Aug. Book VII. ch. i. 

He therefore intends to set forth a doctrine original with him- 
self 

" There is formed and imprinted in every thing an appetite 
towards two natures of good ; the one as every thing is a total 
or substantive in itself ; the other, as it is a part or member of a 
23 



354 TROILUS AND C11ESSIDA. 

greater body ; whereof the latter is in degree the greater and 
worthier, because it tends to the conservation of the more general 
form. The former of these may be termed ''Individual or Self- 
Good,' the latter fc the good of Communion' . . . Thus it is ever 
the case (in nature) that the conservation of the more general 
form controls and keeps in order the lesser appetites and inclina- 
tions. This prerogative of the communion of good is much more 
engraven upon man, if he be not degenerate ; according to that 
memorable speech of Pompey, who being in a commission of pur- 
veyance for a famine at Koine, and being dissuaded with great 
vehemency and instance by his friends about him that he should 
not hazard himself to sea in an extremity of weather, he said only 
to them, * It is needful that I go, not that I live,' so that the love 
of life, which is the predominant feeling in the individual, did not 
outweigh affection and fidelity to the commonwealth." De Aug. 
Book VII. 

And again, " Individual or Self-Good is divided into 8 Good 
Active and Good Passive,' whereof the former, which is active, 
seems to be the stronger and more worthy . . . and in common 
life there is no man's spirit so soft and effeminate, but esteems 
the effecting of somewhat he has fixed in his desire more than 
any pleasure or sensuality . . . and it is no wonder that we 
earnestly pursue such things as are secured and exempted from 
the injuries of time tohich are only our deeds and work*. 

" There is also another important preeminence of the active 
good, produced and upheld by that affection which is insepara- 
ble from human nature, the love of novelty and variety, which 
in the pleasure of the sense is very confined and can have 
no great latitude. . . . But in enterprises, pursuits, and pur- 
poses of life, there is much variety," etc. De Aug. Book VII. 
ch. ii. 

According to these doctrines the good of the individual, or that 
which belongs to a thing, as " a total or substantive in itself," 
must be postponed to the good of the community ; and even with 
respect to the individual, the good of a life of action is greatly 
superior to that of the pleasures of the sense, for the reasons 
given above, that " deeds and works " are exempt from " the 
injuries of time" and also because the pursuit of enterprises is 
accompanied by that " affection, in separable from human nature, 
the love of novelty and variety" 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 355 

Of these original doctrines of Bacon, the great speeches and 
main action of the play give us a living picture. For instance, 
the refusal of Achilles to take an active part for the Grecian 
cause, and his abandoning himself to the love of Polyxena, are 
flagrant violations of these precepts. No more forcible example 
can be adduced of the higher obligation that the individual owes 
to the community of which he is a member than the duty of a 
soldier to cooperate with and, if need be, sacrifice life and all for 
the good of the general body to which lie belongs. But Achilles 
reverses this rule ; he places his private inclinations above his 
duty to the public and breaks his honorable engagement with 
Hector to keep his dishonorable oath to Polyxena. 

" Fall, Greeks * fail, fame ; honour or go or stay j 
My major vow lies here, this I'll obey." 

Wrapped in self-admiration he is "a total" in himself; he is 
his own ideal and knows no law but his own will. 

" Possessed he is with greatness, 
And speaks not to himself, but with a pride 
That quarrels at self-breath." 

Like the Achilles of Horace he denies that he is subject to 

rules, — 

" Jura negat sibi nata, nihil non arrogat armis," — 

and refers all things to the arbitrament of force. 

The lax discipline of the Grecian host rendering compulsory 
measures impracticable, Ulysses exerts all his wisdom and policy 
to win this sluggish and vain-glorious hero back to duty and 
action by purging his mind of self-idolatry and awakening his 
slumbering emulation. And in this process, as will be seen fur- 
ther on, a dramatic example is afforded of the practical applica- 
tion of Bacon's doctrine of the culture and amendment of the 
mind, — a branch of moral philosophy which Bacon asserts phi- 
losophers had previously to his time neglected, and which he was 
the first to expound (vide De Aug. Book VII. ch. iii.). 

Passing from the " general part touching the exemplar of 
good," Bacon proceeds to " the culture of the mind," without 
which part " the former seemeth to be no better than a fair image 
or statue, which is beautiful to contemplate but is without life or 
motion." 

"Now in the culture of the mind and the cure for its diseases, 



356 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 

three things are to be considered ; the different characters of dis- 
positions, the affections, and the remedies ; just as in the treat- 
ment of the body three things are observed ; the complexion or 
constitution of the sick man, the disease, and the medicines." De 
Aug. Book VII. ch. iii. 

" So, then, the first article of this knowledge is concerned with 
the different characters of natures and dispositions. And we 
are not here speaking," he says, "of the common inclinations 
either to virtues or vices, or to disorders and passions, but of 
those which are more profound and radical. And in truth I can- 
not sometimes but wonder that this part of knowledge should 
for the most part be omitted both in Morality and Policy, con- 
sidering it might shed such a ray of light on both sciences." De 
Aug. Book VII. ch. iii. 

He then refers to the traditions of astrology ; also to the poets, 
" amonp- whom are everywhere interspersed representations of 
characters " (for which, he might have added, Homer is especially 
distinguished); also to the wiser sort of historians, "for these 
writers having the images of the persons whom they have selected 
to describe constantly before their eyes hardly ever make mention 
of any of their actions without inserting something concerning 
their natures." Out of these materials he would have a full and 
careful treatise constructed, "not however," he adds, "that he 
would have these characters presented in ethics (as we find them 
in history or poetry or common discourse) in the shape of com- 
plete individual portraits, but rather the several features and 
simple lineaments of which they are composed and by the var 
rious combinations and arrangements of which all characters 
whatever are made up, that so we may have a scientific and ac- 
curate dissection of minds and characters and the secret disposi- 
tions of particular men may be revealed'' De Aug. Book VII. 

ch. iii. 

This recommendation to draw up sketches of characters, in 
which only the more marked and radical features should be de- 
lineated, is not contained in The Advancement, but is one of the 
additions made in the De Augmentis, and Shakespeare conse- 
quently could not have been acquainted with Bacon's views on 
this point from any published work of his ; yet in the play are 
found some remarkable examples of just this portion of the doc- 
trine of the cultivation of the mind, which Bacon claims " had 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 357 

never been incorporated into moral philosophy, to which they 
principally appertain." For instance, Ulysses' portrait of Troilus 
is an epitome of " the several features and simple lineaments " as 
recommended by Bacon. 

" A gam. What Trojan is that same that looks so heavy ? 
Ulyss. The youngest son of Priam, a true knight ; 

Not yet mature, yet matchless • firm of word, 
Speaking in deeds, and deedless in his tongue • 
Not soon provoked, nor, being provoked, soon calmed ; 
His heart and hand both open and both free ; 
For what he has, he gives, what things he shows ; 
Yet gives he not till judgment guide his bounty, 
Nor dignifies an impure thought with breath : 
Manly as Hector, but more dangerous ; 
For Hector in his blaze of wrath, subscribes 
To tender objects ; but he, in heat of action 
Is more vindicative than jealous love ! 
They call him Troilus/' etc. 

A similar summary of the more marked lineaments of the char- 
acter is the picture of Ajax, drawn by Alexander : — 

Alex. This man, lady, hath robb'd many beasts of their particular addi- 
tions ; he is as valiant as the lion, churlish as the bear, slow as the elephant ; a 
man, into whom nature hath so crowded humours that his valour is crushed into 
folly, his folly sauced with discretion : there is no man hath a virtue he hath not a 
glimpse of, nor any man an attaint but he carries some stain of it : he is melancholy 
without cause and merry against the hair : he hath the joints of every thing, but 
every thing so out of joint that he is a gouty Briareus, many hands and no 
use ; or purblind Argus, all eyes and no sight." 

Other examples might be quoted. The whole business of 
Thersites is to dissect the characters of those around him. He 
hits off their leading traits in a most masterly and compendious 
way. 

" Next in order is the knowledge touching the affections and 
perturbations which are the diseases of the mind." 

And here, again, Bacon refers to the poets and historians as 
" the best doctors of this knowledge, where we may find painted 
forth with great life how affections are kindled and excited " 
[as the vanity of Ajax is made to swell under the flattery of 
Ulysses (Act II. Sc. 3), or the love of Troilus is excited by Pan- 
dar's praise of Cressida (Act I. Sc. 1)], "and how pacified and 
restrained " [as the jealous rage of Troilus is restrained by the 
admonitions of Ulysses. 



358 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 

" I will not be myself, nor have cognition 
Of what I feel ; I am all patience." 

Act V. Sc. 2]. 

" And how contained from act and further degree " [as iEneas 
checks the patriotic pride that leads him to extol his countrymen. 

" But peace, iEneas, 
Peace, Trojan ; lay thy finger on thy lips "]. 

" And how they disclose themselves though repressed and con- 
cealed " [as the haughty disposition of Diomed is disclosed by 
his gait, — 

" He rises on the toe ; that spirit of his 
In aspiration lifts him from the earth," — 

or as Cressida's true disposition, notwithstanding her dissimula- 
tion, is at once revealed to the gaze of Ulysses by " every joint 
and motion of her body "]. 

" How they work " [as in Thersites' description of the vainglory 
of Ajax : " He stalks up and down like a pea-cock, a stride and a 
stand," etc. (Act III. Sc. 3), or as in the ferment of doubt ex- 
cited in the mind of Achilles by jealousy of Ajax, — 

" My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr'd, 
And 1 myself see not the bottom of it."] 

" How they vary " [as in the constancy of Cressida]. " How 
they are inwrapped one within another" [as love and jealous 
fear and diffidence of his own merit and distrust of novelty and 
temptation, and a presentiment of approaching calamity all mingle 
in the sadness that weighs so heavily on Troilus at parting from 
Cressida (Act IV. Sc. 4)]. 

" How they fight and encounter one with another " [on which 
particular Ulysses relies for the reformation of Achilles] '* And 
many other particularities of this kind [of which instances can 
easily be found in the play] " amongst which this is of special use 
in moral and civil matters, how, I say, to set affection against 
affection and use the aid of one to master another, like hunters 
and fowlers, who use to hunt beast with beast and bird with 
bird. . . . For as in governments of states, it is sometimes neces- 
sary to bridle one faction with another " (as Ulysses sets up 
the faction of Ajax against that of Achilles), " so it is in the in- 
ternal government of the mind" 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 359 

Having thus discoursed of the divers " complexions and consti- 
tutions" and, secondly, of " the diseases" Bacon next treats of 
" the remedies. 17 

"Now come we to those points," he says, "which are within 
our own command and have operation on the mind to affect and 
influence the will and appetite, and so have great power in alter- 
ing manners, wherein philosophers ought carefully and actively to 
have enquired of the strength and energy of custom, habit, exer- 
cise, education, example, imitation, emulation, company, friend- 
ship, praise, reproof, exhortation, fame, laws, boohs, studies, and 
the like. For these are the things that rule in morals ; these the 
agents by which the mind is affected and disposed, and the ingre- 
dients of which are compounded the medicines, to preserve or 
recover the health of the mind, so far as it can be done by human 
remedies." De Aug. Book VII. ch. iii. 

To the above ingredients of mental medicines there may be 
added (although they are obviously included under the heads of 
reproof, exhortation, " and the like "), ridicule, satire, derision, 
the very aim of which is the reformation of the manners. 

To the influence of praise, fame, emulation, and exhortation, 
and especially example and imitation upon the characters, the 
movement of the piece is owing. Like medicines of the body, 
which are potent to produce disease as well as to cure it, these 
" agents for affecting and disposing the mind " are effective for 
evil as well as for good. To example, imitation, fame, and 
emulation are attributable the factions of the Grecian leaders. 
In a council held by the Greeks, Ulysses thus discourses on the 
causes that produce the dissensions of the Grecian camp : — 

" The great Achilles — whom opinion crowns 
The sinew and the forehand of our host, 
Having his ear full of his airy fame, 
Grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent 
Lies mocking our designs. With him, Patroclus, 
Upon a lazy bed the livelong day 
Breaks scurril jests ; 

And, with ridiculous and aiokward action 
(Which, slanderer, he imitation calls) 
He pageants us." 

Nestor, also, points out the influence of imitation and example: 

" And in the imitation of these twain 

(Whom, as Ulysses says, opinion crowns 



360 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 

With an imperial voice) many are infect. 

Ajax is grown self-wilVd ; and bears his head 

In such a rein, in full as proud a place 

As broad Achilles ; keeps his tent like him • 

Makes factious feasts ; rails on our state of war, 

Bold as an oracle ; and sets Thersites 

(A slave, whose gall coins slanders like a mint) 

To match us in comparisons with dirt ; 

To weaken and discredit our exposure, 

How rank soever rounded in with danger." 

And in the following, again, Ulysses ascribes the neglect of 
rule and the disorganization of the Grecian host to the effect of 
example : — 

" And this neglection of degree it is 
That by a pace goes backward, in a purpose 
It hath to climb. The General 9 s disdained 
By him one step below • he, by the next ; 
That next, by him beneath ; so every step 
ExampVd by the first pace that is sick 
Of his superior, grows to an envious fever 
Of pale and bloodless emulation ; 
And 't is this fever that keeps Troy on foot, 
Not her own sinews." 

Having thus seen the potency of " the medicines " which Bacon 
prescribes for the cure of " the diseases of the mind," we may 
revert to the example the play affords of their practical applica- 
tion in the case of Achilles. To cure his factious spirit, and 
arouse him from the inactivity into which pride in his own great- 
ness throws him is the aim of Ulysses, whose practical wisdom 
and knowledge of the world render him* if not an embodiment of 
the Exemplar of Good or " wise man " of the stoics — at least, a 
type of the political philosopher and teacher of men, or, as one of 
the most elegant of Shakespearian critics 1 has felicitously termed 
him, " the great didactic organ of the piece " ; and the challenge 
of Hector to the Greeks affords him an opportunity of putting a 
plan for this purpose into execution. He thus imparts his design 
to Nestor, — 

" Ulysses. Nestor — 
Nest. What says Ulysses ? 
Ulyss. I have a young conception in rny brain, 
Be you my time to bring it to some shape." 

1 Hon. Gulian C. Verplanck. 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 361 

[For a comment on these lines see Bacon's explanation of the 
parable of Metis in his Essay on Counsel.] 

Nest. What is 't ? 



Ulyss. This challenge that the gallant Hector sends, 
However it is spread in general name, 
Relates in purpose only to Achilles. 

. . . Do not consent 
That ever Hector and Achilles meet ; 

. . . Make a lottery, 
And by device let blockish Ajax draw 
The sort to fight with Hector : among ourselves 
Give him allowance as the better man, 
For that will physic the great Myrmidon, 
Who broils in loud applause, and make him fall 
His crest, that prouder than blue Iris bends. 
If the dull, brainless Ajax come safe off, 
We '11 dress him up in voices : if he fail, 
Yet go we under our opinion still 
That we have better men. But, hit or miss, 
Our project's life this shape of sense assumes, 
Ajax employed plucks down A chilles' ) plumes. 
Nest. Now, Ulysses, I begin to relish thy advice. 
Two curs shall tame each other ; pride alone 
Must tarre the mastiffs on, as 't were their bone." 

In this Ulysses acts clearly on the Baconian doctrine of set- 
ting affection against affection, and of bridling one faction with 
another. 

In pursuance of his plan, Ulysses works upon the mind of 
Achilles by alarming his pride lest the Greeks set up Ajax for 
their idol instead of himself. But first he advises Agamemnon 
and the rest to affect a neglect of Achilles : — 

" Ulyss. Achilles stands i' the entrance of his tent ; 
Please it our General to pass strangely by him, 
As if he was forgot ; and, Princes all, 
Lay negligent and loose regard upon him. 
I will come last ; 'tis like he '11 question me 
Why such unplausive eyes are bent, are turn'd on him ; 
If so, I have derision medicinable 
To use between your strangeness and his pride, 
Which his own will shall have desire to drink, 
It may do good : pride hath no other glass 
To shew itself but pride ; for supple knees 
Feed arrogance and are the proud man's fees." 



362 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 

Then follows that eloquent " exhortation " to action, in which 
Ulysses administers large doses of the Baconian medicines, art- 
fully mingling "praise" and "reproof" and arousing Achilles' 
64 emulation " and " love of fame " by holding up the " exam- 
ple " of Ajax, who was likely to become renowned and the fa- 
vorite of the Greeks by doing that which Achilles ought himself 
to do. 

Ulyss. " Now shall we see to-morrow 

An act that very chance doth throw upon him, 

Ajax renowned. O Heavens, what some men do 

While some men leave to do ! 

How some men creep in skittish Fortune's hall 

Whiles others play the idiots in her eyes ! 

To see these Grecian lords ! why, even already 

They clap the lubber, Ajax, on the shoulder, 

As if his foot xoere on brave Hector's breast 

And great Troy shrinking. 

Achilles. I do believe it : for they pass'd by me 

As misers do by beggars ; neither gave to me 

Good word nor look. What ! are my deeds forgot f 

Ulyss. Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back 

Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, 

A great-siz'd monster of ingratitudes: 

These scraps are good deeds past • which are devoured 

As fast as they are made ; forgot as soon 

As done. Perseverance, dear my lord, 

Keeps honour bright : , to have done is to hang 

Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail 

In monumental mockery. Take the instant way ; 

For honour travels in a strait so narrow 

Where one but goes abreast : keep then the path, 

For emulation hath a thousand sons 

That one by one pursue : if you give way 

Or hedge aside from the direct forth-right 

Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by 

And leave you hindmost. 



Then what they do in present, 

Though less than yours in past, must overtop yours." 

Having thus alarmed Achilles' pride and appealed to his spirit 
of emulation, and having also touched upon the necessity of per- 
severance in " deeds and works" which only, according to Bacon 
in the passage already quoted, can prevent "the injuries of time ," 
Ulysses further enforces his argument for " the preeminence of 
the active good" over " the pleasures of the sense" that is, for 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 363 

deeds and the fame of the hero over the love of Polyxena, with 
another Baconian doctrine ; warning Achilles of that " affection 
inseparable from human nature, the love of novelty and variety" 
which leads men to "praise the present object" and "new-born 
gauds" while they consign to oblivion the past, however merito- 
rious. 

" For time is like a fashionable host 
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, 
And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly, 
Grasps in the comer : Welcome ever smiles, 
And farewell goes out sighing. O let not virtue seek 
Remuneration for the thing it was ; 
For beauty, wit, 

High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, 
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all 
To envious and calumniating time. 
One touch of nature " 

\i. e. " the love of novelty, inseparable from human nature " 

" makes the whole world kin," — 

[whence it follows] 

" That all with one consent praise new-born gauds, 
Though they are made and moulded of things past, 
And give to dust that is a little gilt 
More laud than gilt o'erdusted. 
The present eye praises the present object : 
Then marvel not, thou great and complete man, 
That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax ; 
Since things in motion sooner catch the eye 
Than what-not stirs : the cry went once on thee 
And still it might ; and yet it may again, 
If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive 
And case thy reputation in thy tent, 
Whose glorious deeds, but in these fields of late 
Made emulous missions 'mongst the gods themselves, 
And drave great Mars to faction. 
Achilles. Of this my privacy 

I have strong reasons. 

Ulyss. But 'gainst your privacy 

The reasons are more potent and heroical." 

[The good of the Grecian host to which you belong is a reason 
" more potent and heroical" against your privacy than the grati- 
fication of your love for Polyxena is for it.] 






364 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 

" 'T is known, Achilles, that you are in love 
With one of Priam's daughters." 

But it must grieve young Pyrrhus, now at home, 
When fame shall in our islands sound her trump 
And all the Greekish girls shall tripping sing, — 
* Great Hector's sister did Achilles win ; 
But our great Ajax bravely beat down him.'' 
Farewell, my lord ; I as your lover speak : 
The fool slides o'er the ice that you should break.' 9 

This profound and persuasive homily, that puts forward with 
so much power the preeminence of a life of action, has its effect 
even on the sluggish, self -worshiping Achilles ; it both quickens 
and perturbs his mind, and he begins to suspect that his suprem- 
acy is endangered. 

u Achilles. Shall Ajax fight with Hector ? 
Patroclus. Ay, and perhaps receive much honour by him. 
Achil. I see my reputation is at stake ; 
My fame is shrewdly gor'd. 



My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr'd ; 
And I myself see not the bottom of it." 



That these teachings and efforts of Ulysses to arouse Achilles to 
duty by awakening his slumbering emulation most pointedly exem- 
plify the entirely novel and peculiar doctrines of moral philosophy 
as laid down in the De Augmentis is too obvious to need a word 
of comment. The same doctrine was also put forward by Bacon 
in a letter to Sir Henry Savill on the " Help of the Intellectual 
Powers " (not published until 1657 though written between 1596 
and 1609), a portion of which it may be worth while to quote here, 
so perfect is the parallel between the philosophical doctrine and 
the poetic exemplification. 

" And as to the will of man, it is that which is most maniable 
and obedient ; as that which admitteth most medicines to cure and 
alter it." 

And after enumerating several of these, he closes, as follows : 
4 And the fourth is, where one affection is healed and corrected, 
by another; as when cowardice is remedied by shame and dis- 
honor, or sluggishness and backwardness by indignation and em- 
ulation and so of the like." Works, Vol. XIII. p. 300. 

But it is not only Bacon's moral doctrines, of which the play 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 365 

gives apposite examples ; his philosophy of civil life receives ex- 
position also. 

Civil knowledge he divides into three parts, Conversation, Ne- 
gotiation, and Government. 

With regard to Government, he says, " It is a part of know- 
ledge secret and retired in both these respects in which things are 
deemed secret ; for some things are secret because they are hard 
to know and some because they are not fit to utter. We see all 
governments are obscure and invisible. 

" But contrariwise in the governors towards the governed, all 
things ought, so far as the frailty of man permitteth, to be mani- 
fest and revealed. For so it is expressed in the Scriptures touch- 
ing the government of God, that this globe which seemeth to us 
a dark and shady body, is in the vieiv of God as chrystal. So 
unto princes and states, the natures and dispositions of the people, 
their conditions and necessities, their factions and combinations, 
their animosities and discontents ought to be, in regard to the va- 
riety of their intelligences, the wisdom of their observations and 
the height of the station where they keep sentinel, in great part 
clear and transparent. Wherefore considering that I write to 
a king that is master of this science, I think it decent to pass 
over this part in silence." Advancement, Works, Vol. VI. p. 
388. 

The spirit of this passage has its poetic counterpart in the fol- 
lowing lines, in which are set forth the ubiquity and intelligence 
of the State as well as the secrecy with which its affairs are ad- 
ministered. 

" Ulysses. 'T is known, Achilles, that you are in love 
With one of Priam's daughters. 
Achilles. Ha ! known ? 

Ulyss. Is that a wonder ? 
The providence that *s in a watchful state 
Knows almost every grain of Plutus' gold ; 
Finds bottom in the uncomprehensive deeps ; 
Keeps place with thought, and, almost like the gods, 
Does thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles. 
There is a mystery (with whom relation 
Durst never meddle) in the soul of state ; 
Winch hath an operation more divine 
Than breath or pen can give expressure to. 



366 TEOILUS AND CRESSLDA. 

All the commerce that you have had with Troy 
As perfectly is ours, as yours, my lord," etc. 

The two passages are evidently the same in scope, thought, and 
sentiment. 

Of conversation, which term Bacon uses in its largest sense o£ 
intercourse, behavior, conduct, including the government of the 
countenance, of the speech, gesture, and carriage of the body, he 
remarks, " The wisdom of conversation ought certainly not to be 
overmuch affected, but much less despised. . . . 

" All grace and dignity of behavior may be summed up in the 
even balancing of our own dignity and that of others, as has been 
well expressed by Livy in that description which he gives of per- 
sonal character. Lest I should appear (says he) either arro- 
gant or servile, whereof the one were to forget the liberty of others, 
the other to forget my own." De Aug. Book VIII. ch. i. 

Of this true rule of mingled deference and dignity iEneas 
gives an example — in the large style of the piece — in his deliv- 
ery of Hector's challenge to Agamemnon, his manner being so 
modest and reverent as to lead the Grecian commander to insin- 
uate that the Trojans were over-ceremonious as courtiers, to 
which iEneas replies with great spirit that though courtiers in 
peace, in war they were soldiers and had no superiors in man- 
hood. 

" JEneas. Is this 

Great Agamemnon's tent, I pray ? 

A gam. Even this. 

JE?ieas. May one, that is a herald and a prince, 

Do a fair message to his kingly ears ? 

Agam. With surety stronger than Achilles' arm 

Tore all the GreekisJi heads, which with one voice 

Call Agamemnon head and general. 

JEneas. Fair leave and large security. How may 

A stranger to those most imperial looks 

Know them from eyes of other mortals ? 

Agam. How ? 

JEneas. Ay, 

I ask, that I might waken reverence 

And bid the cheek be ready with a blush 

Modest as morning when she coldly eyes 

The youthful Phcebus. 

Which is that god in office, guiding men ? 

Which is the high and mighty Agamemnon f 

Agam. This Trojan scorns us ; or the men of Troy 



TROILUS AND CEESSIDA. 375 

" Why, then, you Princes, 
Do you with cheeks abash'd behold our works 
And think them shames, which are indeed naught else 
But the protractive trials of great Jove 
To find persistent constancy in men f " — 

.d then adds, with a figure drawn from the testing of metals, — 

" The fineness of which metal is not found 
In Fortune's love ; for then the bold and coward, 
The wise and fool, the artist and unread. 
The hard and soft are all affin'd and kin." 

This grouping of men of the most opposite natures — bold, 
coward, wise, fool, hard, soft, etc. — in one class is a clear case of 
hasty generalization, of flying from particulars to an abstract 
and useless generality ; but this is followed by a passage, in 
which, under the familiar figure of winnowing, the true method 
of induction by exclusions and rejections is stated : — 

" But in the wind and tempest of her frown, 
Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan, 
Puffing at all, winnows the light away ; 
And what hath mass or matter, by itself 
Lies rich in virtue and unmingled." 

Compare this with Aphorism 16, Book II., of Novum Or- 
ganum : — 

" We must make a complete separation of nature. . . . Then, 
indeed, after the rejection and exclusion has been duly made, 
there will remain at bottom all light opinions vanishing into 
smoke, a form affirmative, solid and true and well defined." 

The other branch of the Inductive Method, called by Bacon 
Learned Experience, is also introduced. What he means by 
" Learned Experience " Bacon explains in the De Augmentis. 
" As a man may proceed in his path in three ways, — he may 
grope his way in the dark for himself ; he may be led by the 
hand of another, without himself seeing anything ; or, lastly, he 
may get a light, and so direct his steps : in like manner when a 
man tries all kinds of experiments, without order or method, 
this is but groping in the dark, but when he uses some direction 
or order in experimenting, it is as if he were led by the hand, 
and this is what I mean by Learned Experience." The Light, he 
adds, is the New Organ. 

Learned Experience, then, is to make trials and experiments 



376 TROILUS AXD CRESSIDA. 

with some aim and preconception of the result. Some degree of 
theory, however conjectural, must guide the experiment. This 
is put in the play by Agamemnon, with regard to the enterprises 
of the Greeks that had not met their expectations. 

•'• Xor, princes, is it matter new to us 
That we conne short of our suppose so far 
That after ten years'* siege vet Troy walls stand ; 
Sith every action that hath gone before 
Whereof we have record, trial did draw 
Bias and thwart, not answering the aim, 
And that unbodied figure of the thought 
That gave it surmised shape." 

These last three quotations, which reflect the fundamental 
rules of Bacon's Method, form one continuous speech, which is 
put into the mouth of Agamemnon, who in this parable stands 
for -rule.'* Act I. Sc. 3. 

Whatever may have been the poet's design in writing this 
speech, and in whatever way its intimate coincidence with Bacon's 
tenets may be explained, it certainly without any forced construc- 
tion may be taken as a poetical statement of cardinal principles 
of the Inductive Logic. That the play should contain dramatic 
examples of Bacon's peculiar doctrines of Moral Philosophy, in- 
cluding the " Georgics of the mind " as a branch of that science, 
and also of various novel points in his Civil Philosophy is not 
difficult to account for, for they are set forth in The Advance- 
ment, which was published in 1605, and there seems to be good 
ground for supposing that the dramatist was familiar with it. 
In The Advancement Bacon quotes from Aristotle's Ethics that 
" young men are no fit auditors of moral philosophy," and Mr. 
Spedding, in his edition of Bacon's Works, points out that this 
is a misquotation ; that Aristotle speaks only of political philo- 
sophy, and that the play has followed Bacon in his error, for in it 
we find the lines : — 

" Xot much 
Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought 
Unfit to hear moral philosophy." 

This certainly indicates that the poet, instead of going to the 
original, took the quotation from Bacon, a supposition which is 
greatly strengthened by the striking similarity which is obvious 
in the context of both writers. It is perhaps also worth noting 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 377 

that both in The Advancement and the play there is found a 
proverb originally taken from the " Sentences " of Publius Syrus, 
" Amare et sapere vix Deo conceditur" In The Advancement 
(Vol. VI. p. 181, Bacon's Works), this inability "to love and be 
wise " is transferred from the Gods to men. " It is not granted 
to man to love and be wise ; " and the play (Act III. Sc. 2) fol- 
lows Bacon's alteration : — 

" For to be wise and love 
Exceeds man's might." l 

But there are other parallelisms between the play and The 
Advancement, which, though resting on less obvious analogies, 
strongly point to the playwriter's acquaintance with Bacon's 
work. The allusion to Aristotle is found in that part of The Ad- 
vancement wherein Bacon treats of moral philosophy and the cul- 
ture of the mind as a branch of that science ; and in the par- 
ticular paragraph which contains the quotation, he is handling the 
subject of " books and studies and what influence and operation 
they have upon manners" and he asks: "Did not one of the 
fathers, in great indignation, call Poesy vinum dcemonum because 
it increaseth temptations, perturbations, and vain opinions ? " 
Now Troilus and Cressida is a satire upon the most famous and 
influential book of poetry ever written, the study of which forms 
a necessary part of a liberal education, and the ridicule is aimed 
at the " vain opinions " and false ideals engendered by it, such 
as admiration of the heroism of the battlefield and a love of war 
and military glory. It is idle to say that at this day the Homeric 
poem can have no influence ; it was the foundation of Grecian 
literature and civilization, and so long as a love of Greek culture 
shall last, Homer will awaken enthusiastic admiration, and who 
shall estimate the influence of this upon the mind of the world? 
More philosophical surely is the opinion of the eloquent Foster 
that "the spirit of Homer will vanquish as irresistibly as his 
Achilles vanquished. . . . And who can tell how much that pas- 
sion for war, which from the universality of its prevalence might 
seem inseparable from the nature of man, may have been in the 
civilized world reinforced by the enthusiastic admiration with 
which young men have read Homer and similar poets, whose 
genius transforms what is, and ought always to appear, purely 

1 The same saw occurs in Bacon's Essay, Of Love, first published in 1612. 



378 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 

horrid to an aspect of grandeur ? . . . Whatever is the chief anc 
grand impression made by the whole work on the ardent minds 
which are the most susceptible of the influence of poetry, that 
shows the real moral; and Alexander and Charles XII., through 
the medium of ' Macedonia's madman,' correctly received the 
genuine inspiration." 

But not to dwell on this point, which has reference to the whole 
scope and design of the play rather than to the mode of han- 
dling the subject in particular scenes, it is tolerably evident that 
the dramatist was acquainted with Bacon's book ; and if in 
writing a play in which he intended to hold up Learning and 
Philosophy, or, in other words, man's reason and intellect, in- 
stead of his animal bulk and sinew, as that on which his greatness 
depends, he found much in that treatise on Learning that suited 
his purpose, and consequently condensed a large measure of the 
book into his comedy, it is a fact that perhaps need not surprise 
us ; but it is a remarkable and significant fact that in this same 
play, which reflects so much of Bacon's mind, passages should 
be introduced that maj^ fairly be construed as pointed, though of 
course figurative, illustrations of the most characteristic features 
of Bacon's Inductive Method, — a method which, though the 
philosopher was much engaged upon at the. time this play was 
written, he did not give to the world for some twelve years after- 
ward. 

But does not this play, which inculcates the science of rule 
when taken, not merely in detached passages, but in its whole 
drift and scope, and which has lying at its bottom the reason or 
rule of rules, reflect the spirit of the Baconian philosophy ; for 
this philosophy is also a science of rule or art of direction, and is 
so termed by Bacon ? 

" And this is the very thing," he says, " which I am preparing 
and labouring at with all my might, — to make the mind of man 
by help of art a match for the nature of things ; to discover an 
Art of Indication and Direction, whereby all other arts with 
their axioms may be detected and brought to light." De Aug. 
Book V. ch. ii. 

The Inductive Logic, then, is an Art of Direction or science of 
rule, and that which in the Novum Organum Bacon calls the dis- 
covery of a form, in his earlier writings is termed " the freeing a 
direction." By this process, which is but a counterpart of that 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 379 

more elaborately set forth in the Novum Organum for the dis- 
covery of a form, each instance in which a given nature or effect 
is produced, is regarded as a rule for its artificial production. But 
as the same effect may be produced by many different means, and 
be found in many heterogeneous substances, — redness, for in- 
stance, which may be found in the rose, the ruby, the rainbow, 
and numberless other things and appearances — the essential 
cause remaining the same in all, the direction is not made suffi- 
ciently free, that is, comprehensive, until after an examination of 
numerous different instances, and the exclusion of all unessential 
circumstances, it embodies in its formula a statement of the one 
essential cause or law which underlies the production of the effect 
in each particular instance. To lay down such a direction is 
equivalent to the discovery of the form ; and, on the other hand 
the discovery and definition of the form constitutes a direction or 
rule of practice. 

Now what in Natural Philosophy is the investigation Qi the 
forms of physical natures, and the framing of practical direc- 
tions, is, in Troilus and Cressida, transferred to Moral Philo- 
sophy, the province of which is the investigation of the form 
of human nature, which form is, preeminently, a rule of practice, 
since it is the soul or reason, which, in its complete development 
of virtue and wisdom, is that exemplar or ideal of good or model 
of perfect Humanity that is the Supreme Rule of human practice. 

The other subdivision of The Art of Invention, that is, the 
Invention of Arguments (which technically is called "Topics"), 
may be taken, together with the Art of Judging by Syllogism 
(which is the ordinary logic), inasmuch as the invention of argu- 
ments cannot be well exemplified in a play, except by the applica- 
tion of such arguments to some subject in the dialogue. The 
debate in council before Priam (Act II. Sc. 2) is a regular piece 
of dialectic, in which the reasoning turns upon the proper use of 
reason, while the arguments pro and con for the delivery of Helen 
to the Greeks are drawn from the topics of "eligibility" and 
"the better." Vide Aris. Org. Top. Book III. ch. i. 

The question which arises among the personages of the play, 
and which, in one form or another, forms the subject matter of 
almost every dialogue, is the comparative merit of persons, and 
their respective claims to superiority. The vain-glorious vaunting 
in which they all indulge, as well as the depreciation of their 



380 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 

rivals, from which none of them are free, necessarily involves 
judgments on this point. Sometimes the question is treated argu- 
mentatively, as in the answer of Diomed to Paris's inquiry whether 
he or Menelaus were the better deserving of Helen (Act IV. 
Sc. 1). Another conspicuous instance is the judgment which 
Ulysses passes upon the comparative merits of Ajax and Achilles. 
Act II. Sc. 3. 

And so comprehensively miscellaneous is this drama that this 
question of relative superiority is brought also to the test of exper- 
iment, as in the trial by combat between Ajax and Hector. 

But the play is more profoundly illustrative of logic than it can 
be made by the mere introduction of logical technicalities. The 
Logic of the Schools is nothing more than the reduction to scien- 
tific method of the mental processes in deductive reasoning made 
necessary by the laws of the mind. These processes, when stripped 
of technical details, are very simple. 

"All the aims of human reason," says an able logician, "may 
in the general be reduced to these two : 1. To rank things under 
those universal ideas to which they truly belong; and, 2. To 
ascribe to them their several attributes and properties in conse 
quence of that distribution." 

The first step, then, in Logic is the creation of universal ideas 
This is done by the compositive and divisive process of the mind, 
which is a part of its mechanism, and of which Bacon speaks in 
his general division of the sciences as the foundation of Philo 
sophy. 

" Philosophy," he says, "discards individuals; neither does it 
deal with the impressions immediately received from them, but 
with abstract notions derived from these impressions ; in the 
composition and division whereof, according to the law of nature 
and fact, its business lies. And this is the office and work of 
Reason" De Aug. Book II. ch. i. 

The mind, therefore, by its natural action, separates its notions 
of things by their differences and compounds them by their com- 
mon attributes, and thus forms species and genera, or classes, to 
which it gives names. These names, consequently, are general 
terms and are significant of abstract or universal ideas : they are 
the " organs " of discourse. 

To give any object the name of a class, which is, of course, a 
general term, is to rank it under the universal idea which the 



~\ 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 381 

term signifies, a process, which all men, however ignorant of logic, 
are constantly and necessarily performing, for almost all the lan- 
guage of daily life is made up of general terms. This is particu- 
larly noticeable in the abusive or derisive "calling of names," by 
which individuals are assigned to classes characterized by odious 
or contemptible properties. With this species of logic the play 
abounds, and examples need not be cited. Vide Act V. Sc. 1. 

On the other hand, when distinction is conferred upon an object, 
singular terms are created, which are applicable only to individ- 
uals and which also form their additions or titles. An instance 
of this occurs in the passage in which Achilles arrogantly boasts 
that he will slay Hector in some particular part of his body that 
he may commemorate the wound by a name : — 

" Tell me, you heavens, in which part of his body 
Shall I destroy him ? whether there, or there, or there ? 
That I may give the local wound a name 
And make distinct the very breach whereout 
Hector's great spirit flew." 

Now, as the play represents Man in relation to the species, the 
common attribute of which is the reason, whose ordinary office 
and work it is to compound and separate and so classify all phe- 
nomena, these notions of composition and division are funda- 
mental ones in the piece, and constantly recur in the characters, 
incidents, diction, tropes, and witticisms. Of these, examples will 
be given when the rhetoric of the piece is touched upon ; but first 
some note must be taken of the Art of Transmission. 

Of this Art, the third branch is the Illustration and Adorn- 
ment of Speech. This pertains to Rhetoric, of which Bacon thus 
speaks : — 

" Rhetoric is subservient to the imagination as Logic is to the 
understanding ; and the duty and office of rhetoric, if it be deeply 
looked into, is no other than to apply and recommend the dictates 
of reason to imagination, in order to excite the appetite and will," 
and again, he says, " the end of rhetoric is to fill the imagination 
with observations and images to second reason." 

Rhetoric contributes its aid by arraying the truth which reason 
commends for acceptance in similes and ornaments of speech. Of 
this there is an example in the speech of Nestor, in which he 
takes up the thought just previously let fall by Agamemnon that 
Adversity is the true test of manhood, and expands it into a 
speech made up wholly of illustrative trope and comparison : — 



382 TROILUS-AND CRESSIDA. 

" With due observance of thy godly seat, 
Great Agamemnon, Nestor shall apply 
Thy latest words. In the reproof of chance 
Lies the true proof of men" 

Such is the text which Nestor thus translates into figure and 

similitude : — 

" The sea being smooth 
How many shallow bauble boats dare sail 
Upon her patient breast, making their way 
With those of nobler bulk? 
But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage 
The gentle Thetis, and anon behold 
The strong-ribh'd bark through liquid mountains cut, 
Bounding between the two moist elements, 
Like Perseus' horse : where 's then the saucy boat 
Whose weak untimber'd sides but even now 
Co-rivall'd greatness ? either to harbour fled, 
Or made a toast for Neptune. Even so 
Doth valour's show and valour's worth divide 
In storms of fortune ; for in her ray and brightness 
The herd hath more annoyance by the brize 
Than by the tiger ; but when the splitting wind 
Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks, 
And flies fled under shade, why, then, the thing of courage 
As rous'd with rage, with rage doth sympathize, 
And with an accent tun'd in self- same key 
Retorts to chiding fortune." 

Thus a thought contained in one line, or two half lines, is 
rhetorically expanded into twenty lines and upwards of illustra- 
tion and ornament. 

In the Art of Rhetoric, Bacon reports certain deficiencies, one 
of which is the want of a collection of " the popular colours of 
good and evil" (which are the Sophisms of Rhetoric), with their 
elenches or refutations annexed ; and he gives by way of exampL 
the following : — 

" Sophism,. That which people praise is good, that which they 
blame is bad. 

" JElenche. He praises his wares, who wants to get them o: 
his hands. 

" It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer ; but when he is 
gone he will vaunt." 

Both branches of this refutation are found in the play, in 
Paris's reply to Diomed's contemptuous estimate of Helen. 






TROILUS AND CRESSJDA. 399 

ness, steadiness to falling, union to discord, elevation to descent. 
Take the very opening lines. 

" The Greek are strong and skilful to their strength ; 
Fierce to their skill, and to their fierceness valiant" 

Here strength is superadded to strength. Then follow weakness, 
detraction, and despondency. 

" But I am weaker than a woman's tear, 
Tamer than sleep, fonder than ignorance, 
Less valiant than the virgin in the night 
And skil-less as unpractis'd infancy." 

The effect of anti-climax and of all diminishing series is an 
unsatisfactory one. But the theme of the play is the destruction 
of system and unity, the factious disorganization of the Grecian 
camp ; it is a picture of disorder and the overthrow of rule ; and 
it is quite possible that the dramatist, whose genius was of the 
boldest and most innovating character, designedly left the picture 
without aesthetic totality in order to enhance the effect and deepen 
the impression made by the portrayal of principles which are the 
source of all imbecility. 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 






A want of invention has often been charged upon Shakespeare, 
because he goes for the fables of his plays to some old story or le- 
gend instead of quarrying the plot out of his own brain, but to 
whatever extent he is indebted to others for his materials, he uses 
them no otherwise than as the sculptor does the block out of which 
he carves his statue ; the ideal that lies hidden within it and that 
he extricates from it is all his own ; while his ingenuity as a con- 
structive artist is manifest in his seizing upon some apparently 
unimportant feature of his original, by which he brings it within 
that class of writings that supplies him with " the form " of his 
piece. 

Such is the case with As You Like It, the plot of which is 
taken from a novel by Thomas Lodge (itself founded probably on 
the Coke's Tale of Gamelyn) entitled "Evphues* Golden Legacy, 
bequeathed to Philautus' sonnes nursed up with their father in 
England." Of the incidents of this novel — which, so far as style 
is concerned, is a mass of frigid conceits — the dramatist freely 
availed himself, yet he so quickened these dead materials with a 
now " form " or soul that his work is as fresh and original as if 
wholly his own creation. 

" A legacy " is a free gift made by will and is a token of love. 
It springs from good will or benevolence (bencvolcns^)* — and 
therefore may be considered as a type of all gifts and services pro- 
ceeding from love and favor. But the greatest and most desirable 
gift that can be made is knowledge, and in Ei^lnies' case his 
legacy is entirely educational, consisting only of a book, which en- 
joins upon Philautus to breed well his sons, — " bend them," it says, 
"in their youth like the willow least thou bewail them in their 
for their wilfulness.'* The story thus bequeathed to work 
these good effects is entitled ** Rosalvnd/' and opens with an ac- 
count of a famous knight of Malta, John of Bourdeaux, "whom 
Fortune had graced with many favors and Nature honoured with 
sundry exquisite qualities, so beautified with the excellence of both 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 401 

as it was a question whether Fortune or Nature were more prod- 
igal in deciphering the riches of their bounties." 

This valiant knight also makes " a legacy," in which, after 
disposing of his plough-lands among his children, he bestows 
upon them a large estate of moral precepts far more valuable than 
gold, for, as he says, " wisdom is better than wealth, and a golden 
sentence is worth a world of treasure ; " and of these precious 
sayings the one most emphatically expressed and dwelt upon is, 
perhaps, the injunction to observe " the golden mean" " Take 
heed, my sonnes, the mean is sweetest melodie. ... Be valiant, 
my sonnes, but not too rash, for that is extreme. Fortitude is 
the mean." 

Such is the character of Euphues' legacy ; it is distinctly edu- 
cational. 

A will is a devise, 1 so called because it divides and makes dis- 
position of an estate, allotting parts and shares to different indi- 
viduals at the pleasure of the testator. In analogy with the por- 
tions given by^ will, the play regards the dispositions of men (as 
was e 7 ^scribed in the instance of John of Bordeaux) as made up 
of c 1)er iin gifts and properties of body and mind, which constitute 
their allotment of human nature ; or, in Bacon's language, " of 
the spirit of man according as it is meted out to different indi- 
viduals." Nov. Org. Book I. A ph. 42. 

But devise and device are the same word in different significa- 
tions, both primarily signifying a division. A device was an 
emblem with an appropriate motto, having some moral signifi- 
cance, inscribed upon a shield or banner, or worn as the livery of 
a chieftain to distinguish him and his followers, and divide them 
from others. Afterwards device came to mean anything devised 
or invented, to which the verb devise corresponded in the sense of 
to contrive, plan, forge, feign, counterfeit, etc. ; and hence, in the 
play, the characters are looked upon as devised. Orlando says of 
Rosalind : — 

" Thus Rosalind of many parts 
By heavenly synod was devised, 
Of many faces, eyes, and hearts, 
To have the touches dearest prized ; " 

and if we recur again to the word disposition we find that it lias 
the same signification, for, according to Richardson, " Disposition, 

1 Devise — divisa,L. Latin, from dividere. Howard's Diet, de la Cant, de Noma. 
26 



402 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

in Shakespeare, is collectively the whole arrangement of parts, 
the frame" Vide Kich. Diet, in v. 

The term device was also applied to a kind of stage plays, 
which, under emblematic forms, sought to convey some moral 
truth ; and which, being pure inventions of the fancy, made but 
little attempt to preserve verisimilitude, and were, therefore, 
emphatically called Devices or Inventions. In them the poet 
gave free rein to his fancy, and gods and goddesses and emblem- 
atic characters and personifications of all kinds figured in them. 
They were mere devices of the brain ; but as in the case of a 
devise or testament, of which the will of the testator is the only 
law, yet such will must act within the lines of the higher law and 
general policy of the community, so notwithstanding the fancy of 
the inventor is the only law of a device, it still is restrained by 
the general law of decorum and good taste, a continence of the 
fancy being as necessary when exercised artistically in a device 
as when exercised morally in the pursuit or indulgence of desire. 

These plays, though mere jests and intended f<^r pastime, had 
a serious side, and would have lost their emblematic cl ° icter 
and been without meaning, had they not had a moral ynifi- 
cance. According to " rare Ben," who wrote a considerablcfn um- 
ber of them, " they should be grounded on solid learning," and he 
adds that the rule should be observed " to suffer no object of 
delight to pass without his mixture of profit and example ; " and 
this serious side may be seen in the titles of his own pieces, as 
" Pleasure reconciled to Virtue," " Love freed from Ignorance 
and Folly," and the like. 

Devices or masques were also much in request at the nuptials 
of the heirs of great families, and Hymen was a stock character 
in them. Many songs were introduced, and they almost always 
ended with a dance, in which respects As You Like It observably 
conforms to them ; and, indeed, As You Like It is a comedy which 
takes as its constructive principle the " form " or idea of a Device 
(which, whether the word is taken in the sense of a last will or of 
a stage play, is that a man's will and pleasure is his only law), 
and paints the world as a theatre and human life as a play — " all 
the world 's a stage," says Jaques — in which every man acts his 
will and plays his part in the pursuit of his fancies. The dia- 
logue is filled with invention in verse, argument, and jest, — in- 
vention itself being, at times, the topic of discourse. The char- 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 403 

acters, especially Rosalind, are distinguished for inventiveness of 
mind; the business of the play is conversation, consisting of 
pleasantry and jests, and is carried on for purposes of mutual 
entertainment ; all which features of the piece are rendered more 
effective by the learning and philosophy which form its substra- 
tum, as well as by the moralizing cast of the characters, who 
habitually find in natural facts striking emblems of human life. 

It is apparent that " Euphues' Legacy," the title of the old 
novel, which is the source of the plot and which is necessarily 
connected with the notion of a will or devise, suggested to the 
play- writer a device as the artistic form of his play : and in like 
manner, the fact that wills and devises are a class of writings, 
the essential " form " of which is the will of the testator, seems 
clearly to have determined the moral scope of his piece ; for it is 
a representation of a world, in which men's conduct is controlled, 
not by law, but by their own will and pleasure, or by those lik- 
ings and dislikes which depend upon individual disposition, and 
with regard to which each one claims the right to consult his own 
taste and fancy. In this sphere, opinions upon the good and evil 
in men and women and the consequent desire or aversion they 
inspire are often far more dependent upon humor or caprice or 
even upon chance than upon judgment. Indeed, in such a world, 
the reason is but the handmaid of the will, whose office it is to 
devise excuses for the indulgence of every desire. 

The conditions requisite for such a representation are found in 
the following circumstances. A Duke of France is driven into 
exile by an usurping brother, and in company with several loving 
lords who adhere to his broken fortunes takes refuge in the 
forest of Arden, where, like Robin Hood and his merry men, they 
support themselves by the chase. The fame of their sojourn there 
and of the free and happy lives they lead goes abroad, and many 
gentlemen flock thither every day " to fleet the time carelessly as 
they did in the golden world." The Duke has a daughter, Ros- 
alind, who, at the time of his exile, is retained by the usurper at 
the court, as a companion for her cousin, Celia, between whom 
and Rosalind exists a love " dearer than the natural bonds of 
sisters," but in a sudden fit of caprice the usurper affects to con- 
sider her traitorous and banishes her from the court. In this 
strait of Fortune, Rosalind resolves to seek her father in Arden, 
and assuming for greater protection the male attire, and aooom- 



404 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

panied by Celia, and also by Touchstone, the court fool, — botl 
of whom out of pure love and fidelity give up the court to 
her adversity, — she reaches Arden and finds a safe retreat among 
the love-lorn swains and shepherdesses that inhabit a pastoral dis- 
trict upon the skirts of the forest. To Arden, *too, is driven 
Orlando, a noble and valorous youth, who had been the victor in 
a wrestling match before the court, on w r hich occasion he and 
Rosalind had met and, as hero and heroine should do, had fallen 
in love with each other at sight. Orlando had been obliged to fly 
from home to escape the contrivances against his life on the part 
of his elder brother, Oliver, who entertains for him a deadly, 
though causeless, hatred ; and in company with an old and loyal 
serving man, is led, by chance, to that part of the forest where 
the Duke and his companions dwell. By this train of events, 
all the leading personages of the drama are brought together, and 
in the free and irresponsible life of the forest, each one has scope 
enough to indulge whatever tastes or humors are uppermost, how- 
ever wayward or extravagant they may be. All the restraints of 
conventionalism are thrown off, and in Arden the forest branches 
do not wave more freely than they who dwell there speak their 
thoughts and give rein to their fancies. Society is resolved into 
its elements ; all social and political and even domestic ties are 
dissolved ; the company around the old Duke is held together by 
personal attachment alone, and each one makes the world accord- 
ing to his pleasure and previous education. It is that golden 
world 1 in which " man's pleasure is his only law." 

Their social instincts, however, drive them to seek company and 
conversation, but since in the forest there is neither news nor 
affairs nor topics of the day, all pride and ambition being ex- 
cluded, the whole dialogue springs from the invention of the 
speakers, and aims only at the amusement of the hour. It natu- 

1 There can hardly be a doubt that the author of As You Like It was ac- 
quainted with Tasso's Aminta, which was published but a short time previous to the 
production of the comedy ; and that both the spirit and mode of treatment as well as 
the title of the English play, were suggested by some lines in the famous chorus, " O 
bella eU dell' cro " (O beautiful age of gold), which declare the law of the golden 
world, as follows : — 

" Ne f u sua dura legge [i. e. d' onor] 

Nota a quell' alme in libertate avezze. 

Ma legge aurea efelice 

Che Natura scolpi. S' ei piace, ei lice," — 

i. e. your pleasure is your law, or as you like it. 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 405 

rally falls into a vein of mutual criticism ; and though in Arden 
they are under no conventional restraints, they yet take thither 
their culture and breeding and recognize the obligations of civil- 
ity. When Orlando, driven by famine, rushes in, sword in hand, 
upon the Ducal party and threatens with death any who shall 
touch the food until his necessities are answered, the Duke says : 

" Art thou thus boldened, man, by thy distress, 
Or else a rude despiser of good manners, 
That in civility thou seem'st so empty ? 
Orl. You touch M my vein at first, the thorny point 
Of bare distress hath to? en from me the shew 
Of smooth civility : yet am I inland bred 
And know some nurture." 

But, although good manners are transported to the desert, there 
is no observance there of mere ceremony or compliment ; no one 
is called upon to please or be pleased, further than may suit his 
inclination ; no one feels the necessity of either expressing or 
repressing any feeling or opinion for politeness' sake. It is an 
unmasking of Society, a discarding of mere form and affectation, 
and a falling back to natural manners and that law of reason 
which enjoins simply gentleness, sincerity, and good will. Of 
course, this causes frequent exposure of those secret inclinations 
or dislikes which are ordinarily covered by courtesy. Jaques, 
" monsieur Melancholy," and Orlando, " signior Love," encounter 
each other, and with scarce an attempt to preserve the forms of 
civility, express their mutual aversion, coupled with a desire that 
they may meet as little as possible and become better strangers. 
It is the collision of Satiety and Romance. 

This Arden, this golden world or " pleasant land of drowsy- 
head " and indolence, with its preference of a life of nature over 
civilization, ironical as it is, does not seem to be wholly so. It is 
true that the dwellers there profess to think that an escape from 
the evils of society is more than a compensation for the loss of all 
its advantages, — a view which, in its extreme one-sided ness, must 
necessarily appear ironical ; but the dramatist does not seem de- 
signedly to hold up to ridicule the romance of the forest, but 
rather to set forth the power of knowledge and education to neu- 
tralize and baffle Adversity ; and to this end he seizes upon and 
embodies for the delight of his readers two natural and in them- 
selves poetical sentiments, which, though temporary and trail- 



406 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

sient in their nature, he yet renders permanent, so that they give 
the predominant tone to his ideal world ; one, that sense of relief 
with which, when weary of the world and its hollowness, we turn 
away for rest to Nature and her truth and realities ; the other, 
that romantic sympathy which, coupled with the tedium of the 
dull routine of commonplace life, renders so fascinating the tales 
of the wild and joyous life of the forest, like those of " Robin 
Hood and his merry men." The predominance of these senti- 
ments spreads a charm over the whole play and informs life in 
Arden with all that is buoyant in forest freedom and delightful 
in forest meditation. The shade of melancholy boughs naturally 
inspires a pensive mood in minds of sensibility and culture — and 
in such minds only — and the brooks that brawl along the wood, 
and the huge stems of trees, on whose tops rest the weight of cen- 
turies, suggest how durable is nature, how fleeting is man, and 
give a turn to the thoughts that renders meditation doubly sweet 
by the undertone of sadness that mingles with it. So, too, the 
deep peace and seclusion of the forest bring to mind, by force of 
contrast, the cares and strife of life ; and to persons saddened by 
experience of the world, the enjoyment of the quietude and beauty 
of Nature is heightened by the reminiscences of the ingratitude 
and heartlessness of man. Thus the dwellers in Arden, far 
withdrawn from the duties and responsibilities of life, muse upon 
"violated vows" and broken friendships; or they lightly carol 
songs, the burden of which is the emptiness of ambition, or they 
" lose and neglect the creeping hours of time " in idle contempla- 
tion of Time's rapid flight. This delightful carelessness and in- 
consistency, — a frame of mind induced by these subtile contrasts, 
and a state of feeling that has been described by a great student 
of Nature as 

" That sweet mood when pleasant thoughts 
Bring sad thoughts to the mind " — 

this it is that seems to impart the charm to this comedy, the peru- 
sal of which so fills us with the same happy unconcern for the 
ongoings of the world that it is like a real escape from the troubles 
of life, expanding our minds, freshening our hearts, and unbend- 
ing our brows, as if in reality we wandered through the forest 
glades and released 

" Our spirits amongst leaves from careful ake." 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 407 

Yet this mode of life, however attractive in poetry or enjoyable 
as a recreation, does not in the long run comport with human na- 
ture, which is instinctively social ; it is, therefore, an impropriety, 
that is, not proper, to the nature of man ; and, consequently, to 
give relief to this picture of sylvan and pastoral life, which is vir- 
tually a step backward towards barbarism, the poet lays it upon a 
background of culture and education, as seen in the breeding and 
civility of the characters. But in order that the artistic structure 
of the piece and the harmony and significance of its parts may 
be better apprehended from the point of view here taken, it will 
be necessary briefly to set forth the main conceptions which seem 
to make up the scheme of the play. 

In a dialogue between Touchstone and Corin (Act III. Sc. 2) 
the following passage occurs : — 

" Touch. Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd ? 

Cor. No more, but that I know, the more one sickens the worse at ease 
he is ; and he that wants money, means, and content is without three good 
friends : That the property of rain is to wet and fire to burn : That good 
pasture makes fat sheep ; and that a great cause of the night is the lack of 
the sun : That he that hath learned no wit by nature nor art may complain of 
good breeding or comes of a very dull kindred." 

In this answer of Corin's, notwithstanding its tone of ridicule, 
he defines philosophy as a knowledge of the properties of things, 
and of the effects produced by such properties as causes. All 
things in the physical world, according to their natures or proper- 
ties, bear relation to each other, and on these relations depend 
their modes of action. Such action, under like circumstances, is 
always uniform, for, as Corin sagely expounds the matter, fire will 
always burn, rain will always wet, and certain effects are sure to 
follow from certain causes. These relations and their uniformity 
of action and invariable sequences constitute the nature and truth 
of things, on which as first principles reason builds up human 
knowledge. 

In the human world, if man possessed his original purity of 
will and illumination of intellect, he also would in all his actions 
conform to the relations he holds with men and things by reason 
of their various properties, but unfortunately he carries a dis- 
cord within himself, his chief properties — the reason on the one 
hand and the desires and will on the other — being at variance 
often in their promptings to action. The desires are excited by 



408 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

tlie objects to which they bear relation, and impel the will to 
their gratification, to which reason prescribes not abstinence, 
but continence and due limit and degree, or that ,4 golden mean 
so much extolled by moralists and poets. Against this rule the 
will or desires revolt, on which account both the will and the 
reason require training and discipline. — the will in order that 
it may be rendered obedient, and the reason that it may be 
strengthened and its authority increased bv a wider knowledge 
of the truth. Such training softens the manners. " For it is 
an assured truth,'* to quote again from Bacon, ; * which is con- 
tained in the verses, — 

" Ingenuas scilicet diclicisse fideliter artes 
Emollit mores nee siuit esse feros.'' 

[A true proficiency in liberal learning softens and humanizes the 
manners]. 

Liberal learning, then, is the great prop of civil society, which 
depends upon the good will, the likings, and friendships engen- 
dered among its members by their perception of each other's ad- 
mirable and lovable qualities. " A crowd is not company, and 
faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, 
where there is no love." Friendship necessarily begins between 
two, and perfect friendship is probably confined to two of equal 
age and condition, of similar tastes and pursuits, with a recip- 
rocal love of each other's excellence, cemented and strengthened 
by daily intercourse. Such a friendship is set forth in the play 
as existing between Rosalind and Celia. the latter of whom thus 
describes it : — 

•'•' We still have slept together, 
Rose at an instant, learn'd. play'd, eat together ; 
And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans, 
Still we went coupled and inseparable/'" 

Another beautiful picture of friendship is that between the 
youthful master. Orlando, and the aged servant. M old Adam," 
where the difference of age and condition is equalized by love. 

A couple, therefore, bound by ties of love and friendship, is 
Society in its fullest form, or the form in which there is the fullest 
knowledge of each other's properties, the most unreserved ex- 
change of thought and feeling, and particularly represents that 
companionship which, freed from toil and care, aims only at con- 
versational enjoyment. 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 409 

The nearest approach, practically, to this ideal is a couple of 
opposite sex, bound in marriage by mutual promises of love and 
fidelity. From this arises the " house," a term more comprehen- 
sive than family, for it implies a family established for several 
generations, with hereditary estates and honors, and with numer- 
ous branches, all the members of which are bound together by 
consanguinity and ties of love and service. " A house," there- 
fore, may be taken as a model of a community, in which love and 
service and self-sacrifice constitute the standard of morals and 
manners ; and the idea of a " house" is adopted in the play as a 
representative form of society at large, which is made up of an 
aggregate of " houses," one of which is the reigning house ; and 
this feudal feature gives a mediaeval cast to the picture, and fur- 
nishes a strong contrast to the unconventional forest life of 
Arden. 

This will account for the profuse use of allusions to the family 
relationships throughout the piece, while the duties of love and 
friendship implied by them are brought into higher relief by the 
unnatural hatred of Oliver for Orlando, and the cruelty of the 
usurping Duke towards his brother. 

With the family or house are necessarily connected nurture and 
breeding, which in their first forms are physical only, and consist 
in providing food, as is imaged in " the infant in the nurse's 
arms ; " then follows mental nurture, as exemplified in " the 
school-boy, creeping, like snail, unwillingly to school ; " after 
which succeed studies and exercises that mould the manners of 
the growing youth, and confer that refinement of mind and truth 
of character that mark the gentleman or man of gentility, — and 
thus gentility, which referred originally to dignity of birth, be- 
comes but another name for the virtue and wisdom, which shine 
forth in superiority of manners, and which far more than lineage 
are the distinction of a " house." 

The manners of men and the parts they play on the stage of 
life, though shaped very greatly by their native dispositions, seem 
to owe their deepest impress to their fortunes. Nature gives the 
original bias, but Fortune gives the education, which last must 
be taken as comprising, together with scholastic exercises, all 
those agencies, which are met with in the school of the world, 
and which work upon the will as well as upon the understand- 
ing — such as friends, company, counsel, persuasion, praise, 



410 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

reproof — all which may be embraced under the head of discourse 
and conversation, as it is by means of these that they are brought 
into play. These have the power to mould the will and amend 
the mind, and also, if not properly applied, they have power to 
deprave it. Thus Orlando, at the opening of the play, is intro- 
duced, grieving over his want of education, and charging that his 
brother Oliver subjects him to base associations for the purpose 
of depraving his manners. He says : " He lets me feed with his 
hinds, bars me the place of a brother, and so far as in him lies 
mines my gentility with my education" And again, alluding to 
the clause in his father's will in which Oliver is enjoined " to 
breed him well," he says : " You have trained me up like a peas- 
ant, obscuring and hiding from me all gentlemanlike qualities," 
and he demands " such exercises as may become a gentleman" 

It is, accordingly, the moulding power of education, or of that 
special training which men receive in those walks of life into 
which Fortune casts them, that mainly produces the great diver- 
sity of parts, which figure in this " wide and universal theatre " 
the world. Not to speak of the various, professions and callings, 
each class, condition, sex, period of life has its peculiar affections, 
tastes, habits, manners, and criteria of excellence ; and what is 
suitable for one is often considered wholly unfit for another ; as 
Corin tells Touchstone : " Those that are good manners at the 
court are as ridiculous in the country as the behaviour of the 
country is most mockable at the court." 

Both the shepherd and the courtier look at the world from 
their own point of view and under different relations, and both 
color the truth of things with their own feelings and prejudices. 

It is proverbial that there is no disputing about tastes, yet 
beneath all the variety of dispositions and standards of propriety 
created by special training, there is one rule of reason, common 
to all men, which, applicable alike to all actions and passions, 
enjoins continence and the avoidance of all extremes, or, in other 
words, " the golden mean " as the universal rule of conduct and 
manners. This is equivalent to a perfect adjustment of conduct 
to the true properties and relations of things. It forbids the 
indulgence of excessive desires and humors, of extravagant opin- 
ions and behavior, and of improprieties of all kinds, in other 
words, of violations of reason, for that faculty being the distinc- 
tive property, or in Baconian language " propriety " of man, every 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 411 

unreasonable word and act is an impropriety. Consequently, the 
test whether u the golden mean" or the exact point of equality 
between the too much and too little has been hit lies in the abil- 
ity to render a sufficient reason for one's words and actions. But 
invariably to act with judgment and good sense is the perfection 
of education, and implies " a very universal knowledge of the truth 
of things," for the mind can judge correctly only in proportion to 
the extent and accuracy of its knowledge. 

On improprieties in each other men are constantly passing judg- 
ment. No two persons, not even the most intimate friends, can 
associate without judging of each other's mind and person as dis- 
played in conversation, bearing, manners, dress, powers of pleas- 
ing, and many similar points of appearance and deportment. 
Every folly and absurdity in word and act is noted — mentally, 
at least — and excites reproof and ridicule. Want of respect and 
civility are always particularly reprehended. And so deeply 
seated in human nature is this spontaneous censure of ill-manners 
that it takes a special literary form in Satire, and is the source 
also of that special character, the cynic, who finds nothing in human 
customs but folly and vice and spends his life railing at the evil 
which his own experience has taught him. But like schoolboys, 
who, when chidden, stammer out some excuse, so in the greater 
school of the world offenders are ever ready with reasons to 
justify, or at least to explain and extenuate their faults, — and 
this must especially be the case in a world where each one's will 
is his only law, — but as no sound reason can be given for what is 
really reprehensible, such excuses are necessarily false and falla- 
cious, and hence it is that the dialogue of the piece, which abounds 
with expressions of liking, good wishes, kind salutations, and other 
forms of civility on the one hand, and of railing, chiding, and 
reproofs of faults on the other, is also copiously supplied with 
sophisms given as grounds of opinions and behavior generally ; 
and indeed it characterizes the mental action of the personages of 
the piece that they all habitually assign reasons, for the most part 
fallacious, for what they say or do. Even the banter and raillery 
which takes up so much of the conversation of the characters is 
of the same nature, and consists, for purposes of mirth and laugh- 
ter, of jocular accusations and good-natured ridicule, of which 
repartees are the confutations. It is remarked by writers on 
logic "that jests are fallacies," L e. "fallacies so palpable," says 



412 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

Whateley, " as not to be likely to deceive any one, but yet bearing 
just that resemblance which is calculated to amuse by the con- 
trast. There are several different kinds of joke and raillery, 
which will be found to correspond with the different kinds of 
fallacies ; the pun (to take the simplest and most obvious case) is 
evidently in most instances a mock argument founded on a palpa- 
ble equivocation of the middle term — and the rest in like manner 
will be found to correspond to the respective fallacies, and to be 
imitations of the various arguments." 

Both in praising and blaming, moreover, the judgment is de- 
ceived and led to false conclusions by the thousand fallacious 
opinions with regard to what is good and what is evil, which are 
held for truths in popular estimation. Such opinions abound in 
common discourse. And so important did Bacon think it to dis- 
abuse the mind of these fallacies which he calls " The Colours. or 
Appearances of Good and Evil " (of which, as will be seen further 
on, the play contains numerous examples), that he recommends 
that a collection be made of them with their elenches and refuta- 
tions appended, and he himself gathered a great number of them, 
of which he published specimens in The Advancement, and also in 
a separate treatise in the year 1597 (a little anterior to the pro- 
duction of this comedy), in the preface of which latter book he 
thus explains the nature and use of these fallacies. 

" The persuader's labour is to make things appear good or evil, 
and that in a higher or lower degree, which, as it may be per- 
formed by true and solid reasons, so it may be represented also by 
colours, popularities, and circumstances, which are of such force, 
as they sway the ordinary judgment either of a weak man or of 
sl wise man not fully and considerately attending and ponder- 
ing the matter. . . . Lastly, to make a true and safe judgment, 
nothing can be of greater use and defence to the mind than the 
discovering and reprehension of these colours, showing in what 
cases they hold, and in what they deceive ; which as it cannot be 
done, but out of a very universal knowledge of the nature of 
things, so being performed, it so cleareth man's judgment and 
election, as it is the less apt to slide into any error." 

Therefore from this, too, it may be inferred that always to hit 
upon the truth and act with reason is the highest result of educa- 
tion, both moral and intellectual, and implies, together with a 
well-regulated will, a "very universal knowledge of the natures" 
or true " proprieties " of things. 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 413 

But this is the same as the aim of philosophy, particularly the 
Baconian philosophy, the avowed object of which is to discover 
the true natures of things, and — when applied to human nature 
— to gain an acquaintance with those important properties of 
men and women that compose their dispositions and characters. 
One who has this knowledge measures the true worth of all ob- 
jects and is affected by them in just that degree which their 
qualities call for ; he is, therefore, equally removed from all 
extremes and one-sidedness, and so behaves as to be able to give 
for his conduct and opinions a reason founded on the truth of 
things. 

But since the true properties of man as a social being are love 
and truth, and as these are the essentials of courtesy and good 
breeding, the wise man is the best bred man, the gentle-man, who 
loves best his fellows and most pities and succors their distress ; 
whose culture makes him the most genial companion, the truest 
friend, the most agreeable talker, yet who always maintains a just 
measure and exact equality between his affections and the objects 
that inspire them. So Hymen says in the play : — 

" Then is there mirth in Heaven 
When earthly things made even 
Atone (at-one) together." 

Measured by the ideal standard of propriety all men are un- 
wise and most men fools, — and the play draws the line not more 
distinctly between what is good and evil than between what is 
wise and foolish, — for the great bulk of mankind, instead of prac- 
ticing the continence of the desires which reason prescribes and 
which is the foundation of content, are hurried away by sensibility 
and fancy into excessive likings and dislikes and other false esti- 
mates ; attributing properties to them who have them not and 
denying them to others to whom they clearly belong, and espe- 
cially is this the case in instances of those sudden likings and love 
at first sight, in which fancy and feeling, kindled by some par- 
ticular beauty or attraction, run into the greatest extremes and 
reach what Bacon calls " the mad degree of love," — a doctrine 
which Rosalind also teaches, declaring that " love is a, madness 
and deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do." 
The lover gives to his mistress every conceivable property that 
can render her excellent, "There never was proud man ," says 
Bacon, " thought so absurdly well of himself as the lover doth of 



414 



YOU LIKE IT. 



the person loved, and therefore it is well said * that it is impossible 
to love and he wise.' ' 

But the lookers-on apply to such one-sided judgments the rule of 
propriety, which pronounces all excess and disproportion between 
the passion and the object to be at variance with reason, and con- 
seqnentlv folly, and they commend or reprehend in the degree in 
which they think this rule observed or violated. Thus Rosalind 
chides Sylvius for his infatuation with Phebe, and Phebe for her 
disdain of Sylvius : — 

•• You foolish shepherd, wherefore do you follow her, 
Like foggy south, puffing with wind and rain ? 
You are a thousand times a properer man 
Than she a woman : ? T is such fools as you 
That makes the world full of illfavour'd children : 
'Tis not her glass, but you, that flatters her ; 
And out of you she sees herself more proper, 
Than any of her lineaments can show her. — 
But mistress, know yourself : down on your knees, 
And thank heaven, fasting, for a good man's love : 
For I must tell you friendly in your ear. 
Sell when you can : you are not for all markets : 
Cry the man mercy ; love him ; take his offer ; 
Foul is most foul, being foul to be a scoffer. 

. . . Shepherdess, look on him better. 
And be not proud : though all the world coubi 

None could be so alms' d in sight as ; 

Act III. Se. 5. 

Of mock arguments and also of more formal fallacies, a great 
abundance is met with throughout the piece ; but this is in ac- 
cordance with the play-writer's usual method, which requires an 
illustration of that art or science that grows out of the means 
employed by the persons of the piece in the pursuit of their ends; 
but in a world of fancy, such as this play depicts, where the seri- 
ous concerns of life are in abeyance, as it were, and men have no 
other business than mutual criticism of each other's humors and 
caprices, so that they all are in a manner put upon their defense, 
what they most need are reasons and arguments to prove them- 
Belves right and thus justify their preferences and tastes, however 
whimsical or absurd. Such a necessity, of course, leads to the 
use of false reasonings of all kinds, out of which grows the art of 
Sophistry : and consequently this art. as will be seen, is largely 
exemplified in the play. 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 415 

If the foregoing attempt to set forth the moral basis of the 
piece involves much that is very familiar, the fault is fairly placed 
at the door of the poet, who creates his fanciful worlds out of such 
common truths, that the analysis of their fundamental conceptions 
only reveals what we are best acquainted with, for the simple rea- 
son that it is taught us in every hour of our daily experience. 
That which the play-writer has done for us and for which he 
merits what Wordsworth invokes on poets generally, " blessings 
and eternal praise," is that he has imparted to these homely and 
common aspects of life a never-fading beauty by enveloping them 
in the luminous haze and golden glow of art and poetry. 

Nurture, education, breeding, taken in their broadest sense of 
amending the mind and improving the manners, include discourse 
and conversation among their chief agencies. 

And here note may be taken of a resemblance between the 
" platform " or moral plan of this play and some views of Bacon 
respecting learning and education. 

In his " Discourse touching Helps for the Intellectual Powers " 
he says : " Of all living and breathing substances, the perfectest 
(Man) is the most susceptible of help, improvement, impression, 
and alteration ; and not only in his body but in his mind and spirit, 
and then again not only in his appetite and affection, but in his 
powers of will and reason . . . and as to the will of man it is that 
which is most maniable and obedient, as that which admitteth 
most medicines to cure and alter it. The most sovereign of all 
is Religion, which is able to change and transform it in the 
deepest and most inward inclinations and motions " [of which 
an instance is given in the play in the conversion of the tyrant 
Duke, — 

" Duke Frederick, hearing how that every day 
Men of great worth resorted to this forest, 
Address'd a mighty power, which were on foot, 
In his own conduct, purposely to take 
His brother here and put him to the sword : 
And to the skirts of this wild wood he came ; 
Where meeting with an old religious man, 
After some question with him, was converted 
Both from his enterprise, said from I he world ; 
His crown bequeathing to his banish'd brother, 
And all their lands restor'd to them again 
That were with him cxil'd "], — 



/ 



416 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

" and next to religion," the " Discourse " goes on to say, " is opin- 
ion and apprehension, whether it is infused by tradition and in- 
stitution or wrought in by disputation and persuasion " [that is, 
by formal teaching and transmission of knowledge (which is time 
and again alluded to in the play), or by disputation, discourse, and 
persuasive speech and conversation ; instances of which make up 
the web of the dialogue and fill it with arguments, counsels, per- 
suasions, and similar attempts to move the will to some certain 
course, but more particularly is this method seen in examples (on 
the comic plane) of Rosalind "curing by counsel" Orlando of 
love ; and in Jaques' plan of reforming the world by satire. This 
latter says, — 

" Give me leave 
To speak my mind and I will through and through 
Cleanse the foul body of the infected world 
If they will but patiently receive my medicine~\^ — 

" and the third is example . . . and the fourth is when one affec- 
tion is healed and corrected by another, as when cowardice is rem- 
edied by shame ;" or, he might have added, love by teasing and 
vexation, which is the method practiced with Orlando by Rosa- 
lind, who having heard her " old religious uncle read many lec- 
tures against courtship," professes to be able to. cure Orlando of 
love by taking upon herself the part of his mistress, and in this 
character putting before him " an example " of the fickle and 
wayward properties of the sex. She says : — 

" Ros. I profess curing it by counsel. 

Orl. Did you ever cure any so ? 

Ros. Yes, one, and in this manner. He was to imagine me his love, his 
mistress ; and I set him every day to woo me : at which time would I, heing 
hut a moonish youth, grieve, be effeminate, changeable, longing and liking ; proud, 
fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles ; for every pas- 
sion something, and for no passion truly anything, as boys and women are for the 
most part cattle of this colour • would now like him, now loathe him ; then entertain 
him, then forswear him, now weep for him, then spit at him ; that I drave my suitor 
from his mad humour of love to a living humour of madness • which was to for- 
swear the full stream of the world and live in a nook merely monastic : And 
thus I cured him ; and this way will I take upon me to wash your liver as clean 
as a sound sheep's heart, that there shall not be one spot of love in 't." x 

1 The doctrines illustrated in the ahove light and trivial instances (suitable, however, 
to a play which is a Device filled with jests) receive an exposition of great gravity and 
seriousness in Troilus and Cressida. 



kAS YOU LIKE IT. 417 

And in De Augmentis, again, Bacon speaking of the amend- 
ent of the mind and of the means " which have operation on the 
mind to affect and influence the will and appetite and so have 
real power in altering manners" enumerates among others 
" custom, exercise, habit, education, company, friendship, praise, 
reproof, exhortation, boohs, studies, etc." 

The influence of these agencies is not so much marked in special 
instances, though these are not wanting, as in their general diffu- 
sion throughout the piece, some one or other of them being put in 
operation in every scene for the purpose of affecting the will. 
They are wrought into the motives of the characters and the con- 
duct of the action, as, for instance Oliver's working on Charles, 
the wrestler, to take the life of Orlando ; or old Adam's exhortation 
to Orlando to fly ; or Celia and Rosalind's entreaties to Orlando 
to forego the wrestling, or Jaques' counsel to Touchstone not to 
marry ; and indeed there is hardly a scene that will not furnish 
an instance in point. 

The characters in As You Like It represent men who play 
a part in life considered as a play ; and this is emphasized by 
making the characters, from one motive or another, designedly 
assume and act a part by adopting some humor or opinion for 
their own pleasure or convenience or by affecting sentiments and 
feelings not entirely their own. 

Such a one is the old Duke, who is distinguished by good- 
ness and wisdom, and is therefore an embodiment of the highest 
breeding. He exhibits conspicuously that benevolence which is 
the bond of Society ; and no doubt whether in or out of Arden, 
would be the same gentle man that finds " good in everything ; " 
but being called upon to meet misfortune with the resources of 
philosophy, he practices a doctrine similar to one laid down in a 
book of philosophy by Bacon, who, in a famous passage of The 
Advancement, in which he treats of the education of the will and 
affections, and of the different dispositions and characters of men, 
thus states it. 

" In the culture and cure of the mind of man, two things are 
without our command, points of nature and points of fortune. 
... In these things, therefore, it is left us to proceed by appli- 
cation. 

* Vincenda est omnis fortima ferendo ' " x 

1 All fortune may be overcome by endurance or suffering. 

27 



418 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

" But when that we speak of suffering, we do not speak of a 
dull and neglected suffering, but of a wise and industrious suf- 
fering, that draweth and contriveth use and advantage out of 
that which seemeth adverse and contrary" Bacon's Works, Vol. 
VI. p. 331. 

This wise rule the Duke practices, for being compelled to en- 
counter the hardships of a forest life, he claims that they are 
more than compensated by the freedom they ensure from the 
perils of a court. He says : — 

" Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile, 
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet 
Than that of painted pomp ? Are not these woods 
More free from peril than the envious Court ? 
Here feel we not the penalty of Adam l — 
The seasons' difference — as the icy fang 
And churlish chiding of the winter s wind, 
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body, 
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say, 
This is no flattery ; these are counsellors, 
That feelingly persuade me what I am. 
Sweet are the uses of Adversity, 
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, 
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head : 
And this our life, exempt from public haunt, 
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and good in everything." 

1 Knight, in his edition, adheres to the reading- of the first folio, " Here feel we 
not the penalty of Adam." The change of not to but was made by Theobald. Knight 
remarks in a note : " What is the penalty of Adam ? All the commentators say, the 
1 seasons' difference.' On the contrary, it was, ' In the sweat of the face thou shalt 
eat bread.' The seasons' difference, it must be remembered, was ordained before 
the fall, and was in no respect a penalty. . . . But how could the Duke say, receiv- 
ing the passage in the sense suggested, ' Here feel we not the penalty of Adam.' 
In the first act Charles the wrestler, describing the Duke and his co-mates, says, 
' They fleet the time carelessly as they did in the golden world.' One of the charac- 
teristics of the golden world is thus described by Daniel : — 

' Oh happy golden age ! 
Not for that rivers ran • 

With streams of milk and honey dropp'd from trees. 
Not that the earth did gage 
Unto the husbandman 
Her voluntary fruits, free without fees.' 

The exiled courtiers led a life without toil, — a life in which they were content 
with little, — and they were thus exempt from the penalty of Adam." 

It may be observed that the quotation from Daniel is but a translation of Tasso's 
chorus, u O bella eta dell' oro," before alluded to as the probable source of the title 
of the play. 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 419 

The Duke thus exhibits " a wise and industrious suffering," 
and obviously contriveth use and advantage from adversity ; so 
far that one of his followers replies, repeating the thought : — 

" Happy is your grace 
That can translate the stubbornness of fortune 
Into so quiet and so sweet a style" 

The Duke's philosophy, however, is the irony of the poet, and 
his assumed contentment with a savage life is belied by his indi- 
rect admission that the forest is only tolerable so far as it offers 
analogies with the refinement of the world of learning that he has 
left behind him. It is that he can find "tongues in trees" and 
" sermons in stones " that he conceives it endurable ; but he 
wisely adapts his manners and sentiments to his situation, and 
plays a part both for his own ease and to cheer his companions. 
But that it is a mere counterfeit is clear from the joy with which 
he as well as his companions welcome the news that they can 
return again to their former lives. He tells them that — 

" Every of this happy number 
That have endur'd shrewd days and nights with us 
Shall share the good of our returned fortune 
According to the measure of their states." 

Orlando, who is introduced to us as a noble and ingenuous 
youth, deploring his lack of education and ambitious of distinc- 
tion, and who is as modest, withal, as meritorious, having fallen in 
love, pursues his fancy to the greatest extreme. If not mad- 
dened by his " Angelica " into being furioso, like his great name- 
sake, he is nevertheless quite extravagant enough to pass for an 
ideal lover of romance. Having been forced to fly from home, 
he takes refuge in Arden, and there gives full career to his " mad 
humour of love." If he may not proclaim his passion among 
knights and ladies, he will, at least, teach it to the wilds and 
woods, and make rocks and trees vocal with the praises of his 
mistress. To this end, he carves the name of Rosalind on the 
barks of trees, " hangs odes on hawthornes and elegies on 
brambles," and deludes himself with the thought that the very 
name of his mistress is sufficient to confer civility and elegance 
upon the desert and waste places. Of course, this is but the 
effervescence of youthful passion, and in giving way to it he is 
acting a part inconsistent with his usual staid character. In the 



4*20 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

following verses, he exhibits his invention and his susceptibility 
of the spirit of the forest. 

•• Why should this a desert be ? 
For it is unpeopled ? Xo ; 
Tongues I '11 hang on every tree 
That shall civil sayings show. 
Some, how brief the life of man 
Runs his erring pilgrimage ; 
That the stretching of a span 
Buckles in his sum of age. 
Some of violated vows 
Twixt the soul of friend and friend ; 
But upon the fairest boughs, 
Or at every sentence end m 
AVill I Rosalinda write ; 
Teaching all who read to know 
This quintessence of every sprite, 
Heaven would in little show," etc. 

In the wooing of " Ganymede,'' also, he willfully imposes upon 
himself a deception, and acts a part that he knows is unreal, and 
at the close marks this unreality by saying to the counterfeit 
Ganymede, who has just told him that on the morrow he cannot 
serve his turn for Rosalind, u I can no longer live by thinking" 

The character of the Duke is foiled by that of Duke Freder- 
ick, who is as cruel and rapacious as the old Duke is benevolent 
and philosophic : and in like manner the character of Orlando 
is foiled by that of Oliver, who entertains towards his younger 
brother a malignity so excessive that it has led critics of high 
name to think it without the scope of nature. Men ordinarily 
justify their preferences or dislikes by showing some ground for 
their feelings in the properties of what they like or hate, but 
Oliver hates Orlando for the very properties that should win his 
love. He says : M He is gentle, never schooled, and yet learned, 
full of noble device, of all sorts enchantingly beloved, and indeed 
so mud in the heart of the world and especially of my own peo- 
ple that I am altogether misprised." But so deep are his envy 
and hate at being outshone by these excellences, that he adds : 
M There's nothing my soul loathes more than / 

Of this passage. Coleridge remarks : M It is too venturous to 
charge a passage in Shakespeare with want of truth to nature. 
. . . But I dare not sav that this seeming: unnaturalness is not in 
the nature of an abused willfulness, when united with a strong 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 421 

intellect. In such characters there is sometimes a gloomy self- 
gratification in making the absoluteness of the will (sit pro ra- 
tione voluntas) evident to themselves by setting the reason and 
conscience in full array against it." 

This may be true, and it is altogether likely that such a fact 
relative to the will would be inserted by the philosophic poet in a 
play of which the will and its education, or the want of it rather, 
is virtually the theme. 

Oliver clearly acts a part in his dissembling and his devices 
against Orlando. 

Both the " tyrant duke " and the " tyrant brother " are in- 
stances of men who make their will the law. 

Jaques is an impersonation of that species of cynicism which 
a long acquaintance with the follies and vices of mankind is apt 
to engender, — especially in minds naturally inclined to observe 
and laugh at the foibles of others without any particular wish to 
reform them. He has been a traveler, and knows cities and 
men, and has come to the conclusion that the mass of mankind 
are a crowd of fools. The Duke upbraids him with having been 
a libertine in his youth, and tells him that his satire will but 
expose his own corrupt manners ; but the indifference with which 
Jaques treats the accusation raises a suspicion that the Duke has 
fallen into the usual error of good people who comment on the 
faults of others, of overstating the case, and that Jaques is not 
quite so dark as he is painted. It is true he is well acquainted 
with vice, but there is no sign in him of a bad heart or of a 
corrupt nature ; on the contrary, he is secretly sympathetic. His 
humor is cynical, but he is a good-natured snarler, not hating the 
world but only laughing at it, and however plain the truth he 
speaks, he never seeks to wound. Having for friendship's sake 
accompanied the Duke to Arden, he falls in with the tone of the 
place, and to such an extent does he carry the pensiveness of 
forest meditation, that he becomes, as it were, the genius loci, 
and is called " the melancholy Jaques." But this seems but a 
device, an assumption of an unreal character which he adopts as 
a humorist, not as a cynic, and as a parody of that " luxury of 
woe," that delightful sadness which is inspired by the shade of 
melancholy boughs. Watched by his companions, he affects to 
weep over a wounded deer, but shows how superficial is his sen- 
sibility by the activity of his fancy, which moralizes the spectacle, 



422 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

as a mere intellectual pleasure, into a thousand similes. His 
excessive sensibility in fact has no more foundation in feeling than 
his paradox that the Duke in killing venison is as great a tyrant 
as his usurping brother has in logic. His real feeling, and the 
amusement he extracts from the weak points of his comrades, 
comes out upon his entering with a party of foresters, who have 
slain a deer, — an event to which he gives a mock importance, 
while he enjoys a covert laugh at the pride and vanity of the suc- 
cessful huntsman. 

" Jaq. Which is he that kilPd the deer ? 

Lord. Sir, it was I. 

Jaq. Let 's present him to the duke, like a Roman conqueror ; and it would do 
well to set the deer's horns upon his head, for a branch of victory. Have you no 
song, forester, for this purpose ? 

For. Yes, sir. 

Jaq. Sing it : 't is no matter how it be in tune, so it makes noise enough." 

This surely is a melancholy that has a strong vein of humor 
and jocularity beneath it. 

Jaques, in his first scene, discloses the true nature of his u hu- 
morous sadness." He asks for a song of Amiens, who tells him 
that it will make him " melancholy ; " to which he replies, in a 
jesting tone, "I thank it: I can suck melancholy out of a song 
as a weasel sucks eggs." His so-called melancholy is a willful 
humor, a play of his fancy, that needs stimulus and food for its 
exercise and life ; a thing with which he amuses himself and his 
companions, but which has nothing to do with the heart. In 
fact it appears more akin to merriment than sadness. 

Jaques is evidently a great favorite with his fellow exiles, and 
though pretending a love of solitude, he is on all occasions the 
longest and loudest talker. The Duke is fond of his society, and 
loves to engage in disputation with him ; but it may be suspected 
that Jaques finds at times the Duke's philosophy a bore, for when 
told that the Duke had been all day seeking him, he says: u I 
have been all day to avoid him ; he is too disputable for my com- 
pany." 

Jaques meets in the forest Touchstone, who is diverting him- 
self over the humors of the place by moralizing with affected 
gravity on the flight of time. The incongruity of the " motley 
fool " yielding, or pretending to yield, to the spirit of the forest, 
accords with Jaques' own view of the absurdity of extolling such 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 423 

a life of idleness as the true life of man, and it gives him the 
keenest enjoyment. It is an emblematic representation in his 
eyes of the folly of forest meditation. If he had ever had any 
melancholy in his disposition, this spectacle, it would seem, would 
have cured him outright. He says : — 

" When I did hear 
The motley fool thus moral on the time, 
My lungs began to crow like chanticleer, 
That fools should be so deep-contemplative ; " 

[present company not excepted (sub-auditor)~\ 

" And I did laugh, sans intermission, 
An hour by his dial." 

Jaques' laughter, like his weeping, is in the extreme, and both 
to a great extent unreal. His repugnance to sting and wound by 
his satire is seen in that it is always general ; and this generality 
he praises in professed satire as the feature that makes it useful. 
He aims at vice, and not at particular persons. 

" Why, who cries out on pride 
That can therein tax any private party ? 
Doth it not flow as hugely as the sea ? " 

And he points out that it is only those who are weak enough to 
wince under the lash who give satire a particular application. 

" He that a fool doth very wisely hit, 
Doth very foolishly, although he smart, 
Not to seem senseless of the bob. If not, 
The wise man's folly is anatomis'd 
Even by the squand'ring glances of the fool," etc. 

Jaques, so far from being a prey to spleen, cannot live without 
society. After having had a taste of Orlando's wit and good 
sense, he solicits his company, and proposes to sit down with him 
and rail " at our good mistress, the world, and all our misery,'' — 
for pastime. He is also attracted by Ganymede (the disguised 
Rosalind), and asks that he may be better acquainted with him. 
Rosalind tells him that " they say that he is a melancholy fdlow" to 
which he assents, but goes on to show that his melancholy is, after 
all, but a whim, "a melancholy of his own" an artificial product, 
which he has " compounded from many simples, extracted from 
many objects," and which he indulges as an humor or mood of 
his mind. 



424 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

Romantic as Jaques professes himself to be in his love of soli- 
tude, of melancholy, and of meditation, he is the echo in Arden of 
the outside world, of its vice, its folly, and — its common sense. 

At the close of the piece, when the play in Arden is played 
out. and the company there are about to return to society and 
resume its duties, u the old gentleman," as Audrey calls him, 
drops the part he so long has played, returns to himself, and 
takes leave of the Duke and his companions with a grace of 
manner and a warmth of heart which bespeak both the true friend 
and the finished gentleman. His valedictory takes the form of a 
icill or bequest. 

" You to your former honour I bequeath [To the Duke] 
Your patience and your virtue well deserve it. 
You to a love that your true faith doth merit [To Orlando]. 
You to your land and love and great allies [To Oliver]. 
You to a long aud well-deserved bed \_To Sylvius]. 
And you, to wrangling ; for thy loviug voyage [To the Clowx] 
Is but for two months victual!' d : So to your pleasures ; 
I am for other than for dancing measures.*' 

Jaques, at the close, preserves his real character as a student of 
human nature and of its humors and fancies by hieing off to the 
converted Duke, in order to gain what knowledge he can from a 
study of his change of heart, for, as he says. — 

M Out of these convertites 
There is much matter to he heard and learn d. 

That Jaques is a humorist beneath the mask of melancholy is a 
view first started by Ulrici, and afterwards taken up and enlarged 
upon by Maginn. The same line of thought is followed here 
because, besides appearing to be the correct analysis, it also dis- 
plays the special design and artistic skill with which Jaques is 
drawn as acting a part, and thus made specially fit (as are the 
other dramatis personee) for a character in a piece which repre- 
sents the world as a theatre, and " all the men and women merely 
players." 

The spirit of life in Arden, with its contradictory play of feel- 
ing, its sadness and its merriment, its tears and its smiles, its 
sorrows and its contentment, culminates in the character of Rosa- 
lind. Her extreme sensibility renders her keenly alive to her 
father's misfortunes and her own. whilst her fancy and buoyant 
disposition enable her at will to hide her sorrows under a mirthful 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 425 

or careless deportment. She is perhaps the character who is the 
most natural and free-spoken of any in the play; who is most 
ingenuous in her manners, and totally free from affectation, yet 
she acts a part throughout. In fact, she acts a double part, first 
that of a youth, and then as a youth, that of a woman. But this 
has reference only to her external action. 

In her nature, Rosalind is a combination of those properties 
which make up the highest excellence in that social world, which 
exists only for pleasure and conversation. All the endowments of 
a brilliant conversationalist belong to her, and she is, simply, the 
most delightful companion in the world. She has sensibility, 
quick sympathy, inventive fancy, sprightly wit, genial humor, 
spontaneous utterance with most felicitous expressions ; and united 
with these qualities great knowledge of life and men, as well as of 
books. And to add still another charm to this fascinating talker, 
she softens the vivacity with which she sometimes rallies others 
with a grace of manner and a sweetness of disposition which win 
faster than her tongue offends. Dr. Johnson says "that Rosa- 
lind is a very learned lady" This is true, but her learning has- 
no tinge of pedantry, and appears only in learned allusions, which 
she converts to pleasantry by her humorous application of them. 
It is, however, her knowledge of the world which gives life and 
zest to her conversation ; she seems to be acquainted with all sorts 
and conditions of men. She is the centre of every group she 
appears in; as soon as she enters, the sparkle of conversation 
begins. Orlando, her lover, is reduced to a mere listener, while 
she pours out with the greatest volubility and readiness of inven- 
tion her memorable warnings to him against the dangers of love 
and the fickleness of the sex. She has a word, and an apt one, 
for every one. As an instance of her invention the following 
passage may be cited, in which she rallies Sylvius, and in which 
invention itself is made a topic of the discourse. 

Sylvius had brought Rosalind a letter from Phebe filled with 
protestations of love, and Rosalind, in order to rally Sylvius out 
of his infatuation for Phebe by disparaging her, pretends that the 
letter is abusive, and thus descants on its contents and style : — 

" Ros. [reading']. Patience herself would startle at this letter, 
And play the swaggerer ; — Bear this, bear all ; — 
She says I am not fair ; that I lack manners ; 
She calls me proud ; and that she could not love me 



426 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

Were man as rare as Phoenix. 'Ods my will ! 

Her love is not the hare that I do hunt ; 

Why writes she so to me ? Well, shepherd, well, 

This is a letter of your own device. 

Syl. No, I protest, I know not the contents ; 

Phebe did write it. 

Ros. Come, come, you 're a fool, 

And turn'd into the extremity of love. 

I saw her hand ; she has a leathern hand, 

A free-stone-colour'd hand ; I verily did think 

That her old gloves were on, but 't was her hands ; 

She has a huswife's hand : but that 's no matter : — 

I say, she never did invent this letter ; — 

This is a man's invention, and his hand. 

Syl. Sure it is hers. 

Ros. Why, 't is a boisterous and a cruel style, 

A style for challengers ; why, she defies me 

Like Turk to Christian : woman's gentle brain 

Could not drop forth such giant-rude invention ; 

Such Ethiop words, blacker in their effect 

Than in their countenance : will you hear the letter ? 

Syl. So please you, for I never heard it yet ; 

Yet heard too much of Phebe's cruelty. 

Ros. She Phebes me. Mark how the tyrant writes. 

[Reads'] Art thou god to shepherd turn'd 

That a maiden's heart hath burn'd ? 
Can a woman rail thus ? " etc. 

This is obviously a piece of acting, and a very entertaining one. 

In her intercourse with Orlando, Rosalind exhibits consummate 
tact, a quality without which there can be no agreeable compan- 
ionship, and presents throughout a contrast between her real and 
assumed sentiments. Her fancy lets loose a flood of affected lev- 
ity and caprice to hide her deep and earnest love, yet she is never- 
theless frank, outspoken, and unconstrained. The reader who is 
in the secret of the part she is playing can readily discern that 
her gayety is but a cloak for her seriousness, her fancy for her sen- 
sibility, and that her impulsive freedom of speech is the best pos- 
sible proof of the purity of her heart. A good example of this 
is when she and Orlando, having gone through with a mock-mar- 
riage, Celia being the priest, her reflections upon the gravity of 
such a step and the possible inconstancy of her lover almost be- 
tray her through the seriousness of the mood they inspire ; but 
she at once runs off into a voluble description of her perverse 
properties as a wife : — 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 427 

" I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock-pigeon over his hen, 
more clamorous than a parrot against rain, more new-fangled than an ape, more 
giddy in my desires than a monkey; I will weep for nothing, like Diana in the 
fountain : and I will do that when you are disposed to be merry, I will laugh 
like a Hyen, and that when thou art inclined to sleep." 

It may possibly be alleged that a maiden so young as Rosa- 
lind, and educated as a princess, could not be so well versed in 
the ways of the common world, or be so well acquainted with the 
seamy side of the world's manners as her sprightly speech shows 
her to be ; but this presentation of life is modeled on the idea of 
an Invention, in which we do not look for a precise adjustment be- 
tween character and circumstance, or between motives and action ; 
and therefore whilst the disproportion which no doubt exists in 
the comedy between some of the characters and their fortunes, is 
not enough to create too strong a sense of unreality, it is enough 
to give to the play the air of a Device or Invention which profes- 
sedly is not a true portraiture of reality. On this account, also, 
lions and palm-trees are introduced into a French forest, to say 
nothing of the emblematic character of Hymen, appearing in per- 
son in the last act. 

This comedy is a medley of scenes, sylvan and pastoral, the 
former of which predominate and give tone to the piece, and 
to them the latter are attached much as Rosalind describes her 
dwelling as being " on the skirts of the forest, like fringe upon a 
petticoat. " The pastoral side is represented by the characters Syl- 
vius, Phebe, Corin, and Audrey, who are impersonations of the 
simplicity characteristic of that Arcadia or golden world imagined 
by the poets, — a region of peace and innocence where the only 
sorrows are those of restless love, and the only cruelties those of 
coy and disdainful shepherdesses. These characters are perhaps 
not so elegant nor so highly idealized as those of the Italian pas- 
torals, as, for instance, the Aminta and H Pastor Fido, which 
had appeared at dates (1572, 1585) just anterior to the produc- 
tion of As You Like It, and with which the writer of that play 
might have been and no doubt was acquainted, 1 but they are con- 
ceived in the same spirit. The principal scene in which they ap- 
pear (Act III. Sc. 5) is an idyl in itself. As, however, the 
structure of the piece is what we are concerned with here, and not 

1 Ben Jonson alludes to the Pastor Fido in Volpone, 1605. Hy mock's Pastor Fido 
appeared 1002. 



428 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

its effect upon the imagination, it is sufficient to point out that, in 
keeping with the idea of the play, this scene is introduced as a 
"pageant." Corin enters and says to Rosalind : - 

" If you would see a pageant truly play'd 
Between the pale complexion of true love 
And the red glow of scorn and proud disdain, 
Go hence a little, and I shall conduct you, 
If you will mark it. 



Ros. Bring us but to this sight, and you shall say 
I '11 prove a busy actor in their play." 

It will be observed that this scene is distinguished from both 
what precedes and what follows it by a higher poetical coloring. 
The contrast, moreover, of the naivete and innocence of the lovers 
with the vivacity and worldly knowledge of Rosalind is so strik- 
ing that of itself it marks the scene as in the nature of a mime 
or interlude. 

Sylvius is no common shepherd ; he is all sighs and similes, all 
poetry and passion, and is a type of a class, not of men, but of 
stage characters, such as figure in the pastoral dramas above men- 
tioned, of Tasso and Guarini. He has sighed so long for the dis- 
dainful Phebe that he has become an ? oracle of love ; and when 
called upon to tell what it is to love, he anatomizes the passion 
into its various properties in a masterly manner, and acts as a 
kind of Coryphaeus to the chorus of distressed lovers about him. 

" Phebe. Good shepherd, tell this youth what it is to love. 
Syl. It is to be made all of sighs aud tears, 
And so am I for Phebe. 
Phe. And I for Ganymede. 
Orl. And I for Rosalind. 
Ros. And I for no woman. 
Syl. It is to be made all of faith and service ; 
And so am I for Phebe. 
Phe. And I for Ganymede. 
Orl. And I for Rosalind. 
Ros. And I for no woman. 
Syl. It is to be all made of fantasy, 
All made of passion and all made of wishes, 
All adoration, duty, and obedience, 
All humbleness, all patience, and impatience, 
All purity, all trial, all observance, 
And so am I for Phebe," etc. 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 429 

Phebe, like the others, acts a part by feigning sentiments 
which are unreal, as in her pretended anger with Ganymede, of 
whom she has become suddenly enamored ; and in her device of 
the letter, which she fills with extravagant protestations of love, 
but which 

" By the stern brow and waspish action 
Which she does use as she is writing it" — 

she persuades Sylvius to believe is " bitter and passing short." 
Her description of Ganymede is a pretty piece of acting, for 
while her love incites her to praise, the necessity of deceiving 
Sylvius compels her to disparage, so that between the two ex- 
tremes she is held at the mean. 

" Phebe. Think not I love him, though I ask for him : » 
'T is but a peevish boy ; — yet he talks well ; — 
But what care I for words ? yet words do well, 
When he that speaks them pleases those that hear. 
It is a pretty youth ; — not very pretty ; — 
But sure he 's proud ; and yet his pride becomes him ; 
He '11 make a proper man. The best thing in him 
Is his complexion ; and faster than his tongue 
Did make offence, his eye did heal it up. 
He is not very tall ; yet for his years he 's tall ; 
His leg is but so so, and yet 't is well ; 
There was a pretty redness in his lip, 
A little riper and more lusty red 

Than that mix'd in his cheek ; 't was just the difference 
Betwixt the constant red and mingled damask. 
There be some women, Sylvius, had they mark'd him 
In parcels as I did, would have gone near 
To fall in love with him ; but, for my part, 
I love him not, nor hate him not," etc. 

Happiness, — or " good, pleasure, ease, content, whatever its 
name," — which some seek in great fortune, others in philosophy, 
Corin seems to find in phlegm. He has neither sensibility nor 
fancy enough to disturb his equanimity, and nothing can surpass 
the dead flat level of his passive acquiescence in whatever For- 
tune can dispense. He says : — 

" I am a true labourer ; I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, 
envy no maris happiness, glad of other men's good, content ivith my harm ; and the 
greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck.'' 1 

This is a most unexceptionable character so far as its proper- 
ties go, and one well adapted to flourish under the reign of Saturn 



430 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

or in The Fortunate Isles. Indeed it may be suspected that 
there is a touch of satire in the portrait ; that he is, in fact, an 
example of the contentment of a contemplative life as opposed 
to the struggles of a life of action ; yet the fortunes of the 
world, if left to the Corins in it, might as well be left to Corin's 
sheep so far as progress and improvement are concerned. 

As Corin is an exemplar of content, so old Adam is one of 
continence ; and thus represents the positive pole of the play. 
This is marked in the following lines : — 

" Let me be your servant : 
Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty : 
For in my youth, I never did apply 
Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood, 
Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo 
The means of weakness and debility. . 
Therefore my age is as a lusty winter 
Frosty but kindly," etc. 

Touchstone, the court fool, is, by virtue of his vocation, the 
actor of a part, since it requires both wit and wisdom to play 
the Tool. Out of attachment to his mistress, he relinquishes 
the comforts of the court to undergo the hardships of the for- 
est, and this bit of self-sacrifice puts him in accord with that 
kindness and friendship which are made the chief motives of the 
piece ; but though he is not devoid of feeling and fancy, his 
whole vocation lies in putting to the touch of reason the humors 
and likings of others, and thus determining their wisdom or 
folly. He is the standard which, in one way or another, meas- 
ures them all. He is ready with an argument for or against, as 
the case may be, — any proposition with respect to the good and 
evil in men and things ; yet whether he reasons in jest or in 
earnest he always preserves his poise of thought, and in his 
preferences and dislikes avoids all extremes and one-sidedness. 
He, therefore, keeps the golden mean. This balance of judgment 
is shown in his reply to Corin, who asks him how he likes a 
shepherd's life. 

" Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself, it is a good life ; but in respect that 
it is a shepherd's life, it is naught. In respect that it is solitary, I like it very 
well ; but in respect that it is private, it is a very vile life. Now in respect it 
is in the fields, it pleaseth me well ; but in respect it is not in the court, it is 
tedious. As it is a spare life, look you, it fits my humour well ; but as there 
is no more plenty in it, it goes against my stomach." 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 431 

Although Touchstone represents the reason, he does not, there- 
fore, always reason correctly ; on the contrary, it is his humor to 
indulge in the grossest sophistry, for he lives in a world where 
man's will or pleasure is his law, and where, therefore, the business 
of the reason is to invent proofs that the will is always right. 
Consequently Touchstone's arguments are parodies on those judg- 
ments of men who pretend to refer their inclinations to their 
reason, but who are always able to prove the expediency of fol- 
lowing their desires. For instance, wishing to marry, he at once 
proves the step expedient, and with a most satirical humor rests 
his argument on the great honor that will accrue to him from 
the infidelity of his wife. 

44 As a wall'd town is more worthier than a village," he says, 
" so is the forehead of a married man more honourable than the 
bare brow of a bachelor." 

In the same spirit he ridicules the oaths with which men sup- 
port their false conclusions with respect to the good and evil of 
their likings and dislikes, as is instanced in his proof of the 
paradox that the knight who had sworn directly contrary to the 
fact that the pancakes were good and the mustard naught was 
not forsworn. 

" Touch. Mistress, you must come away to your father. 

Cel. Were you made the messenger ? 

Touch. No, by mine honour ; but I was bid to come for you. 

Ros. Where learned you that oath, fool ? 

Touch. Of a certain knight, that swore by his honour they were good pancakes 
and swore by his honour the mustard was naught : now, I '11 stand to it, the pan- 
cakes were naught and the mustard was good ; and yet was not the knight 
forsworn. 

Cel. How prove you that, in the great heap of your knowledge? 

Ros. Ay, marry, now unmuzzle your wisdom. 

Touch. Stand you both forth now : stroke your chins and swear by your 
beards that / am a knave. 

Cel. By our beards, if we had them, thou art. 

Touch. By my knavery, if I had it, / were ; but if you sivear by that that is 
not, you are not forsworn ; no more was this knight, swearing by his honour, for 
he never had any • or if he had, he had sworn it away before ever he saw those 
pancakes or that mustard." 

His sense of propriety and aversion to extremes are expressed 
in a series of quibbles, with which he confounds honest Audrey's 
moral perceptions by proving that whether she be well or ill- 



432 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

favored, her honesty is entirely superfluous, and, in fact, much 
better dispensed with : — 

" Touch. Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical. 

Aud. I do not know what poetical is : Is it honest in deed and word ? Is 
it a true thing ? 

Touch. No, truly ; for the truest poetry is the most feigning • and lovers are 
given to poetry ; and what they swear in poetry, may be said, as lovers they do 
feign. 

Aud. Do you wish, then, that the gods had made me poetical? 

Touch. I do, truly ; for thou swear' st to me thou art honest ; now, if thou wert 
a poet, I might have some hope thou didst feign. 

Aud. Would you not have me honest? 

Touch. No, truly, unless thou wert hard-favoured ; for honesty coupled to 
beauty is to have honey a sauce to sugar. 

Aud. Well, I am not fair, and therefore 1 pray the gods make me honest I 

Touch. Truly • and to cast away honesty on a foul slut were to put good meat 
into an unclean dish," etc. 

He shows his own honesty, however, by adding, " But be it as 
it may be, I will marry thee." 

As soon as Touchstone arrives in Arden he gives his judgment 
on the place : " Ay, now am I in Arden ; the more fool I ; when 
I was at home, I was in a better place" But his truth to his 
friends leads him to say, " Travellers must be content" He 
scans the follies around him and at once assumes his own part in 
the play, which is that of burlesquing the manners of others. He 
grows sentimental, like Jaques, and lays him down in the sun 
and ruminates with mock profundity on the flight of Time ; or 
if Rosalind sighs for love, he likewise grows lackadaisical over 
reminiscences of Jane Smile. He even carries his imitation of 
the humors of others so far as to meditate matrimony, but not 
so seriously but that when told by Jaques that Sir Oliver Mar- 
text, being a poor workman, would not marry him well, he argues 
the expediency of not being well married as opening a door to his 
escape in case he should change his mind. 

" I am not in the mind," he says, " but I were better to be 
married of him than of another ; for he is not like to marry me 
well : and not being well married, it will be a good excuse for me 
hereafter to leave my wife." 

This, however, is not premeditated treachery, for his nature is 
founded in truth ; it is a whimsical affectation of worldly wisdom, 
which in all important matters keeps a path open for retreat. 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 433 

It may be observed that Touchstone's argument is drawn from 
one of the " Colours of Good and Evil," laid down by Bacon in 
his Treatise on that subject in the following terms : — 

" That which keeps the matter open is good ; that which leaves 
no opening for retreat is bad," etc. See also De Aug. Book VI. 
ch. iii. Soph. 7. 

Unlike the " fancy-mongers " in Arden, Touchstone selects a 
wife upon calculation. Honesty, he thinks, before beauty, and 
claims the hand of honest Audrey ; giving as his reason that she 
is "a poor virgin, sir, an ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own; a 
poor humour of mine, sir, to take that no man else will. Rich 
honesty dwells like a miser, in a poor house, as your pearl in your 
foul oyster." 

Touchstone is versed both in men and books ; he tells us that 
if any man doubts that he has been a courtier he will furnish the 
proof. " I have trod a measure, I have flattered a lady ; I have 
been politic* with my friend, smooth with mine enemy; I have un- 
done three tailors ; I have had four quarrels, and like to have 
fought one." He overwhelms the clown William who is a rival 
and an aspirant for Audrey's hand by a formidable display of 
knowledge, both scholastic and worldly ; bringing to bear logic, 
rhetoric, and grammar on the one hand, and the arts of policy 
and court intrigue on the other ; at the same time marking his 
own balance by translating — for William's better understanding 
— his courtly terms derived from the French into their plebeian 
Saxon equivalents. 

" Touch. Give me your hand. Art thou learned ? 

Will. No, sir ! 

Touch. Then learn this of me : To have, is to have ; for it is a figure in 
rhetoric that drink, being poured out of a cup into a glass, by filling the one 
doth empty the other : For all your writers do consent that ipse is he ; now, 
you are not ipse, for I am he. 

Will. Which he, sir ? 

Touch. He, sir, that must marry this woman. Therefore, you clown, aban- 
don, which is in the vulgar, leave, — the society, — which in the boorish is company. 
of this female, which in the common is woman : which together is, abandon the 
society of this female : or, clown, thou perishest ; or, to thy bettor under- 
standing, diest ; or, to wit, I kill thee, make thee away, translate thy life into 
death, thy liberty into bondage : I will deal in poison with thee, or in basti- 
nado, or in steel ; I will bandy with thee in faction ; I will oVr-nin thee with 
policy ; I will kill thee in a hundred and tifty ways : therefore tremble, and 
depart." 

28 



434 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

In short, Touchstone embodies the spirit of irony, which runs 
through the play, and is knowledge and reason hidden under the 
mask of a Fool. 

There is in one of the scenes a direct allusion to Gargantua ; 
and the character of Touchstone is Rabelaisian in the breadth of 
its philosophic satire. 

It has been contended that the reason why Shakespeare's plays 
are so deep and true is, that he was born with a mind in perfect 
harmony with nature, and that therefore his pictures of life are 
but faithful reflections of nature, and are the works of an intui- 
tive and spontaneous knowledge ; but Shakespeare's genius seems 
always conscious of its work and its methods, and although by 
no effort can we go under his fundamental conceptions, even if 
we have the good fortune of reaching them, yet the structure 
of his pieces shows that these conceptions were obtained by 
study and meditation, and were the fruits of a mind that had 
fathomed to the bottom every subject of which it treats ; con- 
sequently, he could present such subjects with all their relations 
in plays which are the products of both art and philosophy. And 
in addition to this proof that he worked upon a plan, there is 
another point, which is certainly not accidental but, contrariwise, 
is confirmatory of his philosophic design, that is, he makes his 
plays resonant throughout with diction that constantly awakens 
associations with the conceptions contained in the scheme or idea 
of the piece. This nice workmanship would not have been found 
in the plays had they simply mirrored nature ; but they are not 
nature nor copies of nature, nor intended to be such, but art, 
which makes its own world, in imitation, no doubt, of nature, yet 
with an intentional difference and under artificial forms and arbi- 
trary conditions ; it is nature passed through the alembic of the 
mind, which extracts the essences and ideas of things, and em- 
bodies them in shapes to which it gives symmetry and harmonious 
relation by causing them all to stand conjointly in unity as inte- 
gral portions of one and the same plan or idea. There is, in fact, 
in a Shakespearian play a conventional or artificial element lying 
at its very heart, which is the result of its being founded on, a 
literary " form," that pervades character and composition, and, 
indeed, every part of its organism, with a special influence. It 
converts the play into a dramatic imitation of that particular 
branch of literary art from which the " form " is taken, as, for 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 435 

instance, Cymbeline — as was adverted to in the closing remarks 
on All's Well, etc. — is a history, and in it the characters are 
themselves records of experience ; The Winter's Tale is a work 
of art in which the characters are themselves works of art of more 
or less merit through their imitation of the beautiful ; Troilus 
and Cressida is a parable, in which the characters are objects of 
the sense that stand for ideas that are objects of the intellect ; 
and in like manner with other plays ; and this comedy of As You 
Like It is a devise or device of which the characters, after the 
manner of devises, make their wills and pleasures the law, and in 
accordance also with the idea of a device or stage-play they all 
— Jaques, Touchstone, Sylvius, Phebe — are of a fanciful cast 
of mind and wear a theatrical air ; so that instead of being ex- 
clusively the poet of nature (as he is always called) he invariably 
represents life as modified and tinged with the method and hues 
of that literary art from which he derives his idea. This idea 
governs the diction, phraseology, and imagery of the piece as 
well as its characterization. In As You Like It — if a brief 
recapitulation may be made — this artistic idea is that of a Device 
or Invention, the mere creation of fancy, and having for its end 
sport and pleasure. These plays, notwithstanding the extrava- 
gance of their designs, were, nevertheless, amenable to taste and 
judgment, the rule of the nequid nimis. In conformity with this 
idea, the comedy presents a fantastic and quasi-golden world, 
where men are relieved from toil and care and follow their fan. 
cies, humors, and desires ; in all respects acting their wills and 
pleasures. These desires and pleasures are the most strongly 
evinced in the mutual loves and likings of the sexes, and these, 
moreover, are the most prone to run into extravagance and ex- 
cess, and thus violate reason and propriety, which prescribe con- 
tinence, or the golden mean, as the rule in which true pleasure 
and content are found. But this proportion between the passions 
and their objects can only be attained by nurture or education, 
which disciplines the will and enlightens the reason with a know, 
ledge of the true properties of things by which it is enabled justly 
to estimate their values. 

This statement, though very brief and imperfect, of the artistic 
and moral basis of the piece, is perhaps sufficient to bring into 
view some of the leading conceptions involved in it, — such as 
device, invention, will, pleasure, nurture, continence, etc., — one 



436 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

or two of which may be selected for the purpose of briefly tracing 
their influence on the style and composition of the play. 

Continence, in its moral sense, is equivalent to the observance 
of the golden mean; and the mean is the equal between two 
extremes : therefore the notions of equality, measure, proportion, 
on the one hand, and of extremes and excess on the other, are 
found frequently repeated. The first gives rise to the use of 
such phrases as the following : " By how much defence is better 
than no skill, by so much a horn is more precious than to want," 
or " By so much the more shall I to-morrow be at the height of 
heart-heaviness, by how much I shall think my brother happy," 
etc. 

With equality and mean may be taken all words signifying to 
accord, to agree, to come together, to meet, which last had the 
sense of agreement or concurrence, as in the " Defense of Poesy," 
Sir Philip Sidney, speaking of the Greek word poietes (a poet) as 
signifying a maker, says, " wherein, I know not whether by luck 
or wisdom, we Englishmen have met with the Greeks, in calling 
him maker T 

Extremes are noted both in contrast and in conjunction. Of 
the first, the following is an example : — 

" I would thou couldst stammer that thou mightst pour this concealed men 
out of thy mouth as wine comes out of a narrow-mouth'd bottle, either too 
much at once or none at all" 

Of the union or meeting of extremes, the following are in- 
stances : — 

" Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy" 

" He who lives and dies by bloody drops." 

" I could match this beginning with an old tale," 

" An inch of delay is a South-sea off discovery." 

" A great reckoning in a little room," etc., etc. 

Content, in the moral sense of contentment, pleasure, satisfac- 
tion, etc., is the same word as content, in the physical sense of the 
thing contained. Richardson defines contented, contentus, qui 
continet quod animo satisfaciat, i. e., he who contains what satis- 
fies his mind ; and thus satisfied, having enough, sufficient. 

Under the words contain, and continent, from the same root, 
are found the following definitions : " Holding and keeping within 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 437 

or together, connecting ; (vide) keeping or holding (se) the pas- 
sions within, temperance, patience restrained, forbearing. All 
these significations, and many more of like import, under one 
form of speech or another, are introduced into this comedy. In- 
deed it is necessary to have recourse to the numerous meanings of 
the Latin continere (the root of contain, content) to find a suffi- 
ciently full variety of definitions to explain the vocabulary of As 
You Like It. 

To keep is used also in the sense of to watch and guard, as, 
" The house keeps itself; " also in the sense of to feed, in which 
it accords with words classed with nurture, one of the most prom- 
inent conceptions of the piece. 

Content, in the sense of the thing contained (now more gener- 
ally used in the plural, contents, particularly with regard to 
writings), is necessarily associated with the containing vessel and 
its relative fullness and emptiness. Vessels themselves, of which 
a considerable number are mentioned, such as goblet, cup, bottle, 
dish, bag, satchel, pouch, and others, suggest capacity to hold 
and contain. Analogous to vessels in this respect are articles of 
attire, as bonnet, shoe, slipper, glove, etc. The attire itself is an 
investiture, and is alluded to as containing the wearer. Rosalind, 
inquiring of Orlando's apparel, asks, " Wherein went he ? " 

Filling and emptying are expressed under many forms, and the 
correlative prepositions into and out of, within and without, enter 
largely into the phraseology. 

Fullness again is associated with plenty, abundance, fatness, 
etc., and emptiness with want, penury, leanness, lankness, hun- 
ger, etc. So, too, the terms significant of containing, holding, 
staying, restraining, and the like are balanced by those denot- 
ing loosing, turning out, pouring out, escaping, throwing away, 
and others which convey the notion of freedom from restraint, or 
retention, or a movement out of or from within. A few examples 
may be quoted as specimens. 

" Make the doors upon a woman's wit, and it will out at the casement ; shut 
that, and it will out at the key-hole ; stop that, and it will fly with the smoke 
out at the chimney." 

" Ros. My affection hath an unknown bottom like the bay of Portugal. 
Cel. Or rather bottomless, that as fast as you pour affection in, it runs out." 

In the following beautiful lines, in which the figure is taken 



438 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

from binding and unbinding a sheaf, the same undertone of full- 
ness and emptiness is detected. 

" So holy and so perfect is my love 
And I in such a poverty of grace 
That I shall think it a most plenteous crop 
To glean the broken ears after the man 
That the main harvest reaps : loose now and then 
A scattered smile and that I '11 live upon." 

A man's properties and qualities are his contents, and he is 
estimated according to his fullness or emptiness, with respect to 
merits or faults. 

Orlando, speaking of Rosalind, says : — 

" Therefore Heaven nature charg'd 
That one body should befiWd 
With all graces wide enlarged" etc. 

Jaques, the traveler, describing Touchstone, uses the same 
figure. 

" And in his brain — 
Which is as dry as the remainder biscuit 
After a voyage — he hath strange places cramm'd 
With observation, which he vents 
In mangled forms," etc. 

The analogy between properties and contents is carried in the 
play so far as to be applied to an abstraction having no material 
existence. 

" Here 's eight that must take hands 
To join in Hymen's bands 
If truth holds true contents." 

Even in so slight a passage as the following, the same rhetori- 
cal method can be observed, together with diction and metaphor 
drawn from nurture. 

" Here comes Monsieur Le Beau. 
Ros. With his mouth full of news. 

Cel. Which he \vill put upon us as pigeons feed their young. 
Ros. Then shall we be news-cramm'd." 

Those who take interest in these minutice (trifles, perhaps, but 
not beneath the attention of this most perfect of artists) can 
easily classify the diction by arranging it under the leading con- 
ceptions embraced in the plan of the play : it will no doubt be 



ime 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 439 

observed that the notion of nurture in its physical sense of breed- 
ing, feeding, food, and the like, as well as in its mental sense of 
education, teaching, counseling, etc., is met with on every page. 

Continence and content are the outcome of nurture, philosophy, 
or a knowledge of the properties of things. Of this philosophy 
we have a glimpse in Corin, who has penetrated the mystery of 
cause and effect so far as to know that " good pasture makes fat 
sheep, and that a great cause of the night is the lack of the sun ; " 
yet rudimentary as is this knowledge, it is precisely the same in 
kind as that " very universal knowledge of the nature of things " 
which Bacon points out as necessary to detect the colors and fal- 
lacies that lurk in popular opinions ; and this, again, is akin to 
that possessed by man before the fall, " by the light of which," 
as Bacon remarks in The Advancement, " he did give names to 
other creatures, according to their proprieties," a process which 
is continually repeated in almost every speech that men utter ; for 
it is the office of the reason to rank things into sorts and classes 
according to their properties, and this is done by giving them 
names ; wherefore accuracy and fullness of knowledge are mani- 
fested by calling things by their right names and thus attributing 
to them the properties of the class to which they truly belong ; 
out of inattention to which rule arise all improprieties of speech 
and the great mass of fallacies in reasoning, for, as Bacon says, 
"the false acceptations of words are the sophisms of sophisms." 
And the poet, among the numerous fallacies which he has intro- 
duced into the piece, places a conspicuous example of the error 
growing out of a misnomer in the very opening scene. 

" Orlando. My brother Jaques he keeps at school and report speaks goldenly 
of his profit ; for my part, he keeps me rustically at home, or, to speak more 
properly, stays me here at home unkept ; for call you that keeping for a gentle- 
man of my birth, that differs not from the stalling of an oxf " 

Another instance occurs in the familiar lines : — 

" Good morrow, fool, quoth I : No, sir, quoth he ; 
Call me not fool, till Heaven hath sent me fortune" 

Fortune favors fools ; and Touchstone contends that as he has 
not received such favor, he had not the properties which entitled 
him to the name. 

Another example of misnomer from ambiguity of words is the 
following : — 



440 AS YOU LIKE IT. 






" Oliver. Wilt thou lay hands on me, villain ? 

Orlando. I am no villain [villein or one of base extraction]. I am the 
youngest son of Sir Rowland de Bois ; he was my father ; and he is thrice a 
villain that says, such a father begot villains [villeins']. 99 

Oliver. Get you with him, you old dog. 

Adam. Isold dog my reward ? Most true; I have lost my teeth in your 
service. 99 

This is a common form of repartee, which admits the truth of a 
name used abusively, but, at the same time, gives properties to it 
which, while making it honorable to the person to whom it is 
applied, reflect shame on the person who has used it. It is a true 
elench or re-proof. 

Touchstone ridicules these improprieties of speech in Le Beau, 
who tells the ladies that they have lost " much good sport " at not 
being present at the wrestling, where Charles the wrestler had 
thrown three young men, and broken their ribs. Touchstone 
asks : — 

"But what is the sport, monsieur, that the ladies have lost ? 
Le Beau. Why, this that I speak of. 

Touch. Thus men may grow wiser .every day ! It is the first time that ever 
I heard breaking of ribs was sport for ladies." 

The following is an instance of the different feelings excited 
by a name, just as different views are taken of the properties it 
implies : — 

" Duke. What is thy name, young man ? 
Orl. Orlando, my liege : the youngest son of Sir Rowland De Bois. 
Duke. I would thou hadst been son to some man else. 
The world esteem'd thy father honourable, 
But I did find him still mine enemy. 

Orl. I am more proud to be Sir Rowland's son, 
His youngest son ; and would not change that calling 
To be adopted heir to Frederick." 

A striking misapplication of names is thus noted by " Old 
Adam." 

" Adam. Within this roof 

The enemy of all your graces lives ; 
Your brother — no, no brother ; yet the son — 
Yet not the son ; — I will not call him' son 
Of him I was' about to call his father. 99 

Oliver does not possess the properties of either a son or a 
brother. 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 441 

In the next instance there is a reference of a thing to its class 
upon the discovery of its properties. 

" Oliv. O that your highness knew my heart in this. 
I never lov'd my brother in my life. 
Duke. More villain thou ! " 

Rosalind makes an argument by calling Touchstone " a med- 
lar," with the distinct avowal that he has the properties which 
entitle him to the name. 

" Ros. Peace, you dull fool ; I found them on a tree. 

Touch. Truly, the tree yields bad fruit. 

Ros. I '11 graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a medlar ; then 
it will be the earliest fruit in the country, for you will be rotten ere you '11 be 
half ripe, and that 9 s the right virtue of the medlar." 

Touchstone's reply questions the validity of the argument. 

" You have said • but whether wisely or no let the forest judge." 

Another instance of a name depending on properties is this : — 

" Cel. I found him under a tree, like a dropped acorn. 
Ros. It may well be calVd Jove's tree, when it drops forth such fruit." 

Phebe's reasoning, that eyes cannot be called " murderers," 
rests on the obvious impropriety of such an appellation. 

" Phebe. I would not be thy executioner ; 
I fly thee, for I would not injure thee. 
Thou tell'st me there is murder in mine eye ; 
'T is pretty, sure, and very probable, 
That eyes, — that are thefraiVst and softest things, 
Who shut their coward gates on atomies, — 
Should be calVd tyrants, butchers, murderers ! " 

And in the ensuing lines, Phebe uses the argument ad verecun- 
diam, or an appeal to Sylvius' reverence for the truth : — 

" Now do I frown on thee with all my heart ; 
And, if mine eyes can wound, now let them kill thee ; 
Now counterfeit to swoon ; why, now fall down ; 
Or, if thou canst not, oh, for shame, for shame, 
Lie not, to say mine eyes are murderers," etc. 

Rosalind disproves that Orlando is a lover by showing that he 
has not the properties which entitle him to be called by that name. 

14 Orl. I am he that is so love-shak'd ; I pray you, tell me your remedy. 

Ros. There is none of my uncle's marks upon you ; he taught me how to 

know a man in love ; in which cage of rushes I am sure you are not a prisoner. 



442 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

Orl. What were his marks ? 

Ros. A lean cheek, which you have not ; sl blue eye and sunken, which you 
have not : an unquestionable spirit, which you have not ; a beard neglected, which 
you have not ; — but I pardon you for that ; for, simply, your having in beard 
is a younger brother's revenue. Then your hose should be ungartered, your 
bonnet unbonded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and everything about 
you demonstrating a careless desolation. But you are no such man ; you are 
rather point-device in your accoutrements, as loving yourself, than seeming the lover 
of any other." 

The foregoing examples of the disagreement between things 
and their names, that is, between their actual properties and the 
properties their names connote, which on that account is called 
impropriety of speech, are so numerous as to indicate that their 
introduction is not accidental but systematic, and pursuant to 
some plan or idea lying at the bottom of the piece ; but such 
idea being that of a device, or representation of a world devised 
by fancy, where all the vagaries of desire must be excused by 
sophistry, it is plain that improprieties of speech and reasoning 
aptly find a place in it. They may also be taken to illustrate 
incidentally that imperfection of language in its relation to the 
properties of things which Bacon is ever harping on as the cause 
why logic, with its propositions composed of words, confused, ill- 
defined, and hastily abstracted from things, can never be a trust- 
worthy instrument for the investigation of truth. Vide Nov. Org. 
Book I. Aph. 14-16, 43 ; De Aug. Book V. ch. iv. et passim. 

There are other special forms of argument introduced, of which 
the following is one from contraries : — 

" If he compact of jars grow musical, 
We shortly shall have discord in the spheres" 

The Duke's reproof of Jaques' love of satire is an instance 
of the argument ad hominem : — 

" Jaq. What for a counter would I do but good ? 
Duke. Most mischievous foul sin in chiding sin, 
For thou thyself hast been a libertine. 



And all the embossed sores and headed evils 
That thou with license of free foot hast caught 
Would'st thou disgorge into the general world." 

The following sophism is based upon the " colour " that it is 
good to do what the practically wise do, or what those do whom 
it is becoming to imitate. 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 443 

" Cel. Is 't possible on such a sudden you should fall into so strong a liking 
with old Sir Rowland's youngest son ? 

Ros. The duke my father loved his father dearly. 

CeL Doth it therefore ensue that you should love his son dearly ? " 

An argument from example is thus given : — 

" Oliver. Marry, sir, be better employed and be naught awhile. 
Orlando. Shall I keep your hogs and eat husks with them ? What prodigal's 
portion have I spent that I should come to such penury ?*' 

In 1597 Bacon published, along with the first edition of the 
Essays, a small collection of the " Colours of Good and Evil " 
(colorable arguments on questions of good and evil), which he 
afterwards enlarged and introduced into the De Augmentis. Of 
these colors, some are exemplified in the play, as, " That which 
approaches to good or evil is itself good or evil, but that which is 
remote from good is evil, that from evil good." 

And he says : " It is commonly found that things which agree- 
in nature are placed together, and that things of a contrary 
nature are placed apart ; for everything delights to associate with 
itself that which is agreeable, and to repel that which is disagree- 
able. 

" But this Sophism deceives in three ways : by reason, first, of 
destitution ; second, of obscuration ; and third, of protection. 

" By reason of destitution, for it happens that those things 
which are most abundant and excellent in their own kind attract 
everything as far as may be to themselves, spoiling, and as it 
were starving all things in their neighbourhood. Thus you will 
never find flourishing underwood near great trees. . . . 

" By reason of obscuration, for all things that are excellent in 
their own kind have this, that though they do not impoverish and 
starve the things next to them, yet they obscure and overshadow 
them" etc. 

These elenches are exemplified by Duke Frederick's answer to 
Celia, who has been defending Rosalind against his charges of 
treason on the ground that her intimacy with her cousin is so 
close, and that they so " agree in nature," that if one is a traitor 
the other must be also. He says : — 

"She is too subtle for thee ; and her smoothness, 
Her very silence and her patience 
Speak to the people and they pity her. 
Thou art a fool : she robs thee of thy name ; 



444 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

And thou wilt show more bright and seem more virtuo 
When she is gone." 

Act I. Sc. 3. 

Another of these " colours " is this : — 

" That which it is good to be deprived of is in itself an evil ; 
that which it is bad to be deprived of is in itself a good. 

" This sophism deceives in two ways : by reason either of the 
comparative degrees of good and evil, or of the succession of 
good to good or evil to evil. 

" By reason of comparison : if it was for the good of mankind 
to be deprived of acorns as food, it does not follow that that food 
was bad ; acorns were good, but corn is better. . . . 

" By reason of succession, . . . for where a bad thing is taken 
away, it is not always succeeded by a good thing, but sometimes 
by a worse." 

Thus old Adam endeavors to persuade Orlando to fly from 
home in order to avoid the plots against his life, but Orlando 
argues that to escape such dangers by betaking himself to such a 
life as must succeed, would be to exchange one evil for another 
much worse. 

" Adam. O unhappy youth, 

Come not within these doors ; within this roof 
The enemy of all your graces lives : 



This is no place, this house is but a butchery ; 

Abhor it, fear it, do not enter it. 

Orl. Why whither, Adam, would'st thou have me go ? 

Adam. No matter whither, so you come not here. 

Orl. What ! would'st thou have me go and beg my food, 

Or with a base and boisterous sword enforce 

A thievish living on the common road ? 

This I must do or know not what fodo; 

But this I will not do, do how I can. 

I rather will subject me to the malice 

Of a diverted blood and bloody brother." 

Act II. Sc. 3. 

Beside the few instances of " colours " contained in the De 
Augmentis (among which, however, is the one already mentioned 
as used by Touchstone to uphold the expediency of his being 
married by Sir Oliver Martext, as he was not like to marry him 
well), Bacon also left a collection of them in manuscript, now 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 445 

in the British Museum, one page of which is printed as a speci- 
men in Spedding's Edition of Bacon's Works. 1 Of some of these, 
also, are found examples in As You Like It. And the first in- 
stance here given is particularly pertinent ; it reaches the very 
heart of the play. 

" That of which the contrary is an evil is itself a good ; that 
of which the contrary is a good is itself an evil." 

On this sophism the whole play stands ; it furnishes the argu- 
ment on which the old Duke relies to prove that a forest life, 
in woods and caves, being free from the vices and corruption of 
civilization, is a good, and more desirable than life at court, where 
such evils abound. It is not necessary to quote ; the whole spirit 
of the play accords with this notion, which, in fact, gives the piece 
its peculiar charm. The answer, moreover, which Bacon assigns 
is in unison with the organic idea. 

" It does not hold," he says, " in those things of which the 
excellence is seated in the mean or measure." This is " the golden 
mean," which is held up in the play as the rule of. life. 

Bacon also quotes as an elench the Horatian precept, " Dum 
vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currunt" which we see pointedly 
exemplified in some of the characters, who pass from one ex- 
treme to its contrary. 

Another " colour " is the following : — 

" What is spoken on the score of flattery is a good ; what on 
the score of slander is an evil." 

This sophism deceives by reason of envy, and finds an exam- 
ple of such deception in old Adam's address to Orlando : — 

" Your praise is come too swiftly home before you. 
Know you not, master, to some kind of men 
Their graces serve them, but as enemies ? 
No more do yours ; your virtues, gentle master, 
Are sanctified and holy traitors to you. 
Oh, what a world is this, when what is comely 
Envenoms him that bears it ! " 

Act II. Sc. 3. 

Another is this : — 

" That of which the origin is a good incident is in itself a good ; 
that of which it is a bad incident is itself an evil." 

1 Since the passage in the text was written, this manuscript has been published in 
an edition of Bacon's Promus, by Mrs. Pott, L883. 



446 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

This is used by the Duke Frederick to justify his cruelty to 
Rosalind : — 

" Duke. Let it suffice thee, that I trust thee not. 
Ros. Yet your mistrust cannot make me a traitor : 
Tell me whereon the likelihood depends. 
Duke. Thou art thy father's daughter, that 's enough." 

Act I. Sc. 3. 

Those who will take the pains to examine the piece will find in 
it many examples of what are called technically " Sophistical 
elenchi." The Greek etymon of elench (eAeyxos) means a re- 
proof, a confutation, and, as one who is confuted is put to shame, 
it came to have a moral sense of a reproach or disgrace. So like- 
wise the English terms reproof and reprehension have a double 
meaning, reproof being equivalent to reproach and reprehension to 
confutation, and this double sense is ; made use of in the play, as 
in every scene the characters indulge in chiding, raillery, and re- 
prehension. Thus the logical and moral sides of the play perfectly 
harmonize and cooperate to produce unity of impression. With 
such deep and hidden skill does this wonderful artist work out his 
effects. 

The unreality also implied in playing a part, which is so con- 
spicuous in this piece and which is in accordance with its idea as a 
play, is maintained with great skill and humor and, at the same 
time, truth to nature in the passage of pleasantry between Rosalind 
and Celia ; of whom the first, impatient at the absence of her lover, 
but never doubting his truth, affects to think him faithless, while 
the latter by way of badinage confirms and exaggerates this opin- 
ion, each being conscious that the other is jesting. 

Ros. Never talk to me, I will weep. 

Cel. Do, I prithee ; but yet have the grace to consider that tears do not be- 
come a man. 

Ros. But have I not cause to weep ? 

Cel. As good cause as one would desire ; therefore weep. 

Ros. His very hair is of the dissembling colour. 

Cel. Something browner than Judas's : marry, his kisses are Judas's own 
children. 

Ros. V faith, his hair is of a good colour. 

Cel. An excellent colour ; your chestnut was ever the only colour. 

Ros. And his kissing is as full of sanctity as touch of holy bread. 

Cel. He hath bought a pair of cast lips of Diana : a nun of winter's sister- 
hood kisses not more religiously ; the very ice of chastity is in them. 

Ros. But why did he swear he would come this morning and comes not ? 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 447 

Cel. Nay, certainly, there is no truth in him. 

Ros. Do you think so ? 

Cel. Yes ; I think he is not a pick-purse, nor a horse-stealer, but for his 
verity in love, I do think him as concave as a covered goblet or a worm-eaten nut. 

Ros. Not true in love ? 

Cel. Yes, when he is in ; but I think he is not in. 

Ros. You have heard him swear downright that he was. 

Cel, Was is not is" etc. 

Bacon writing of discourse says, " As for jests, there be certain 
things which ought to be privileged from it, namely religion, mat- 
ters of state, great persons," etc. 

This rule is thus exemplified. Touchstone, having ridiculed the 
knight who had sworn away his honor, Celia asks him, — 

" Pr'ythee, who is it thou mean'st ? 
Touch. One that old Frederick your father loves. 

Cel. My father's love is enough to honour him. Enough, speak no more of 
him ; you will be whipped for taxation one of these days." 

If this passage be not meant to illustrate a rule of manners in 
discourse, it will be very difficult to account for its introduction 
into the piece. 

It is evident that this comedy treats of behavior and conversa- 
tion or manners (which are included under nurture) which is one 
division in the Baconian philosophy of Civil Knowledge, but Ba- 
con is very brief in his treatment of this branch of the subject, say- 
ing, " that this part of civil knowledge touching conversation has 
been elegantly handled and therefore I cannot report it for defi- 
cient " (De Aug. Book VIII. ch. 1). But his remarks respecting 
behavior, the carriage of the body and the countenance, the gov- 
ernment of the speech, and other similar points appertaining to 
conversation and manners generally, coincide both with the letter 
and the spirit of all that is said in the play upon these subjects. 

The irony with which the contemplative life is extolled in this 
comedy concurs with Bacon's views of the superiority of the active 
over the contemplative life. After laying down that what con- 
cerns the public good must always be preferred to the private, he 
says : " This being set down and firmly planted judges and de- 
termines some of the most important controversies in moral philo- 
sophy. For first, it decides the question touching the preferment 
of the contemplative or active life and decides it against Aristotle. 
For all the reasons which he brings for the contemplative respect 



448 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

private good and the pleasure or dignity of a man's self, in which 
respect no question the contemplative life has the preeminence, 
being not much unlike that comparison which Pythagoras made 
for the gracing and magnifying of philosophy and contemplation ; 
who, being asked by Hiero what he was, answered, ' that if Hiero 
were ever at the Olympian games, he knew the manner, that some 
came to try their fortune for the prizes, and some came as mer- 
chants to utter their commodities, and some came to make good 
cheer and meet their friends, and some came to look on : and that 
he was one of them that came to look on/ But men must know 
that in this theatre of man *s life it is only reserved for God and 
angels to be lookers-on. 

" It decides also the question so earnestly argued between the 
schools of Zeno and Socrates on the one hand, who placed felicity 
in virtue simple or attended, which is ever chiefly concerned with 
the duties of life : and on the other hand, the numerous other 
sects, as the Cyrenaies and Epicureans, who placed, it in pleasure 
. . . and the refined school of the Epicureans, which pronounced 
felicity to be nothing else than the tranquillity and serenity of 
a mind free from perturbation, as if they would have deposed 
Jupiter again, and restored Saturn with the Golden Age? De 
Aug. Book VII. ch. i. 

These doctrines, which declare so decidedly for the superiority 
of a life of active duties aver one of contemplation and the ease 
and tranquillity of the Golden Age, are identical with the teach- 
ings of this comedy in this respect, although such teachings are 
in a measure veiled by the* irony with which the preference is 
given to the careless life of Arden. 

The personages of the piece, moreover, exhibit those errors of 
judgment arising in great measure from biases of disposition and 
education, which Bacon classes as " Idols of the Cave," and which 
he thus describes : — 

u Idols of the Cave are the idols of the individual man. For 
every one (besides the errors common to human nature in gen- 
eral ) has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolours 
the light of nature : owing either to his own proper and peculiar 
nature ; or to his education and conversation with others, or to 
the reading of books, ... or to the differences of impressions, 
accordingly as they take place in a mind preoccupied and pre- 
disposed or in a mind indifferent and settled ; or the like ; . . . 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 449 

whence it was well said by Heraclitus that men look for truth in 
their own lesser worlds and not in the greater or common world." 
Nov. Org. Book I. Aph. 42. 

The characters of the piece illustrate these idols ; they are all 
stamped by education and habit, and " refract and discolour " the 
truth of things by their dispositions ; and the play, as a whole, 
may be looked upon as a model in a most beautiful poetic form 
of those worlds which men build in their own minds and which 
consist of the distorted opinions and judgments which they adopt, 
under the influence of their peculiar tastes, respecting the wisdom 
and folly, the properties and qualities of the men and women, 
who, for each of them, make up the world. It is a common ob- 
servation that even the external world takes its coloring to our 
eyes from our affections, and is just what we make it. 

a We receive but what we give 
And in our life alone does Nature live ; 
Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud." 

Over the inner realm of thought our moods and passions exer- 
cise a still more potent sway, and the world is one of goodness 
or one of evil, according to the frame of mind with which it is 
regarded. 

This subjection"of the judgment to a predominant humor, or, to 
use the language of Bacon's Aphorism, " the difference of impres- 
sions accordingly as they take place in a mind preoccupied and 
predisposed or in a mind indifferent and settled" is set forth in 
the well-known passage in which Rosalind points out those with 
whom Time travels in different paces : — 

" Ros. I pray you, what is 't o'clock ? 

Orl. You should ask me what time of day ; there 's no clock in the forest. 

Ros. Then there is no true lover in the forest ; else sighing every minute 
and groaning every hour would detect the lazy foot of Time as well as a 
clock. 

Orl. And why not the swift foot of Time ? had not that been as proper ? 

Ros. By no means, sir. Time travels in divers paces with divers persons : 
I '11 tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, who Time gal- 
lops withal, and who he stands still withal. 

Orl. I pr'ythee, who doth he trot withal ? 

Ros. Marry, he trots hard with a young maid, between the contract of her mar- 
riage and the day that it is solemnized : if the interim be but a se'nnight, Time's 
pace is so hard that it seems the length of seven years. 

Orl. Who ambles Time withal ? 
29 



450 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

Bos. With a priest that lacks Latin and a rich man that hath not the gout: 

for the cue sleeps easily because he can not study, and the other lives merrily 

) pain : the one lacking the burden of lean and wasteful 

learning, the other knowing no burden of heavy, tedious penury : These Time 

ambles withal. 

Orl. Who doth he gallop withal t 

With a thief to the gallon: s : for though he go as softly as foot can fall , 
he thinks himself too soon there. 

, Who stays if still withal ? 
Bos. With lawyers in the vacation • for they sleep between term and term, and 
then the not how Time move*." 

This witty and sprightly dissection of moods and humors, of 
which the dramatic motive is simply talk for talk's sake, can 
certainly be taken for an illustration of " the difference of im- 
5&Ums" made upon the mind, owing to its being either u pre- 
upied or predisposed" like that of the young girl looking 
forward to her marriage, or of the thief going to the gallows, on 
the one hand, or to its being "indifferent and settled" like that 
of the priest who lacks Latin, or of the lawyer who sleeps through 
vacation, on the other. 

Thus judgment is governed by some prevailing emotion, and 
each one according to his temper and his part in life creates a 
world out of his own fancies and feelings. However, the world 
of As Ton Like It is one of love and benevolence, of fancy and 
wit. where even the cruel tyrant and the unnatural brother are 
readily converted to goodness : a world which is extant nowhere 
but in day-dream and imagination, and which is the proper and 
elegant subject matter of a Device ; and therefore this play which 
represents human life as a theatre, and whose characters are gov- 
erned by fancies and one-sided judgments and sophistical reason- 
ing otters a dramatic exemplar of those images of the world which 
Bacon speaks of as being created " by the fancies of men in philo- 
sophical systems,' 3 and which he styles "Idols of the T 
because such systems are but " so many stage-plays representing 
Ids of tl /,. after em unreal and scenic fashion." 

Nov. Org. Book I. Aph. 44. 

But aside from the philosophical significance which the play- 
seem- to possess, its artistic structure makes clear its design as a 
poem. The spirit of Society is ever seen looking through the 
veil of poetry with which Arden invests life and forces itself up 
through the freedom and individuality of the characters ; neither 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 451 

the satirical Jaques nor the benevolent Duke being able to express 
the feelings inspired by the wild life they lead and the objects 
they encounter, but in terms that forcibly recall Society. Even 
the " nimble wit " of Rosalind, abounding as it does in imagery, 
does not furnish a half dozen similes drawn from nature. All 
her illustrations are taken from the oldest and most familiar 
social usages. Though her fresh feeling and frank speech be- 
token her a child of nature, yet in habit of thought and mode of 
expression she is the creature of education. The forest colloquies 
are filled with allusions to social culture, to manners and cus- 
toms, to artificers and professions ; to law, medicine, and divin- 
ity ; to poetry, rhetoric, and the drama ; to painting and drawing, 
music and dancing ; to geography, travels, and voyages ; to occult 
science and the learning of the schools; to mythology, philoso- 
phy, and the doctrine of metempsychosis. The associations thus 
awakened with the refinements of educated life deepen the seclu- 
sion of the desert, and at once temper and heighten the ideality 
of that world of fancy and feeling, of romance and sentiment, of 
musing and reminiscence to which the playwright has given the 
name of Arden. Yet in Arden the tendency of all things is to a 
reestablishment of the social principle, and even before the exiles 
are restored to their rights by the sudden conversion of the usurp- 
ing Duke, all the parties who are marriageable, not excepting 
Touchstone, have plighted their troth. And when in the depths 
of the forest the god Hymen enters, bringing in Rosalind, the 
representative of Society and its spirit of conversation, the com- 
edy is clearly converted into a masque with an obvious emble- 
matic meaning. The verses that are recited and the song in 
honor of Hymen, — 

" Honour, high honour and renown 
To Hymen, god of every town" — 

are the comment on the forest life, which we are thus taught is 
with all its fascinations wholly at variance with the duties of 
social man. 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 

" Fictitious dialogue " has always, in both ancient and mod- 
ern times, been a favorite literary form, of which the greatest and 
politest writers have left specimens. These imaginary conversa- 
tions were discourses or discussions between two or more speakers, 
in which each maintained his opinion on some question selected 
as the subject of the colloquy. They were contentions of wit and 
argument, and exemplified the variety of opinions that are enter- 
tained upon almost every subject by persons of different minds 
and callings ; while in their conclusions they gather up such prob- 
able truth as serves for a determination of the question. These 
" skirmishes of wit " can, of course, be applied to any matter of 
opinion and in any style, although their essential characteristics 
seem to be polite conversation, enlivened by wit, argument, and 
knowledge. 

But a fictitious dialogue falls under the general head of " dis- 
course," which is properly the action of the mind (discursus) in 
passing from one thought to another, especially from premises to 
conclusion; whence the phrase, discourse of reason; and the 
" form '* of a " discourse " as a species of writing is the reason 
itself or the deduction of a conclusion from proofs. 

In its rhetorical sense a "discourse" is a proposition with its 
array of proofs ; it may consist of a single argument comprised 
in one sentence, or of a chain of arguments that fill a volume ; it 
may be dialogue or soliloquy, but in all cases it aims at deducing 
conclusions from proofs in order to form opinions and regulate 
conduct. 

How far the conclusions thus reached will have validity will 
depend upon the nature of the proofs employed. 

In a dialogue or debate there will, of course, be counter propo- 
sitions and proofs in order to rebut opinions and thwart proposed 
action. 

Discourse or debate, of which the subject is human action, must 
relate to the end or the means ; it will, therefore, embrace any 




MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 453 

purpose or plan whatever, and in fact resolves itself into the 
exercise of judgment on the conduct of life. 

Purpose, and proposition are etymologically the same word ; 
the purpose stands to the end, as the proposition does to the 
conclusion; the end attained is the purpose accomplished; the 
conclusion reached is the proposition proved, the one being in 
practice what the other is in logic. The execution of a purpose 
or a plan is therefore the embodiment of discourse in action. 

Plans are patterns in the mind of contemplated action and 
become in practice the application of causes to produce effects. 
A plan is analogous or equivalent to an idea or archetype, or what 
Bacon calls a platform, as in the phrases, " The Exemplar or 
Platform of Good," " the platform of a king," or " the spirit 
of the world working in matter according to platform" that is, 
according to plan, pattern, or idea. 

As discourse may be a single argument or a chain of argu- 
ments, so a plan may contemplate a single act or a sequence of 
actions constituting a course of conduct. And as discourse is sim- 
ply the exercise of reason, so plans are simply patterns of prac- 
tice. But to prefigure events correctly so that plans when carried 
out shall attain success, the mental patterns should exactly coin- 
cide with the truth of nature, and the chain of reasoning have in 
the outward world a practical form in a corresponding series of 
causes. 

However familiar this statement may be, it is analogous, if not 
virtually identical, with a fundamental doctrine of Bacon's philoso- 
phy, which, as formulated in one of his earlier works, the Delinea- 
tio Secundce Partis, runs thus : — 

" To know the cause of a given effect or nature in any subject 
is the aim of human knowledge ; and upon a given basis of 
matter to impose or superinduce any desired effect or nature is 
the aim of human power. And these aims, to one who closely 
observes and truly judges, are one and the same ; for that which 
in contemplation is as the cause, in operation is as the means ; 
we know through causes, we operate through means." 

What Bacon calls " cause " in the foregoing passage, he else- 
where terms "idea" and "form," the discovery of the "form" 
being the great distinguishing feature of his philosophy. Of the 
sense in which he uses the word " form," it may bo said, without 
entering into metaphysical niceties, that the "form " is that essen- 



454 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 

tial nature of a thing which is the cause of its specific properties. 
Bacon calls it " ipsissima res" the very thing itself, and says 
that it differs from the thing only as the internal differs from the 
external (Nov. Org. Book II. Aph. 13). Therefore to know 
" the form " is to have in the mind an exact idea or pattern of 
the very nature of the thing. 

To arrive at this exact representation of the truth is what Bacon 
means by saying that " philosophy is a happy match between the 
mind of man and the nature of things." He also calls " know- 
ledge the double of what is" and says that " the essential form 
of knowledge is nothing but the representation of the truth, for the 
truth of being and the truth of knowing are one." Adv. p. 125. 

A discourse, then, being an array of proofs for the formation 
of an opinion, or to determine a plan or course of action, a play 
which shall take the idea of a discourse as its formative principle 
(according to Bacon's notion of producing a good work of art, as 
laid down in Aphorism 31, Book II. Novum Organum, on the 
Instances of the Wit and Hand of Man) will present characters 
who by persuasions and proofs bring themselves or others to some 
particular way of thinking or acting, and who embody discourse 
in action by the execution of plans which are themselves intended 
to create belief or mould opinion. Such a play is Much Ado, of 
which the business of the characters is to persuade each other to 
adopt some opinion or follow some line of conduct, or they criti- 
cise and discuss the natures and qualities of friends and acquaint- 
ances, sustaining their views by proofs consisting of personal 
knowledge, or report and hearsay, or inferences deduced from 
signs and circumstances or other testimony. 

The action of the piece, moreover, is produced by the prosecu- 
tion of plans formed for the purpose of enforcing assent to some 
opinion or the adoption of some course of conduct. 

To find a necessary framework of fact for such a representa- 
tion, the plot is made up of incidents taken from that side of 
society to which, after business and serious affairs are ended, 
resort is had for conversation and social intercourse, diversified 
and enlivened with balls, banquets, hospitalities, and entertain- 
ments of a like nature. This is emphatically called " Society." 
The first law of Society in general or of association with one's 
hind is kindness or sympathy ; good-will founded on good opinion 
is the first tie between men. Forms and ceremonies are necessa- 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 455 

rily introduced for the regulation of social intercourse, and these 
gradually gain ground — as it is the tendency of form to encroach 
upon and usurp the respect and authority due to reality — until 
kindness and genuine feeling are replaced by empty complaisance, 
and life at last becomes thoroughly conventional, and ruled by 
arbitrary Opinion. 

This aspect of life is best seen among the aristocracy of an old 
town like the Messina of the play, where social customs have been 
long settled, and the rank, wealth, and personal distinction of 
the community are gathered about a Court or into a circle, which 
forms the summit of Society. In this circle the influence of 
Opinion is particularly conspicuous, inasmuch as it affects minuter 
points of behavior and usage than it does among the more 
general body of the people. On this account, it may be taken 
as the type of the force of public opinion generally ; and so potent 
is it to fashion the man, both inwardly and outwardly, as in senti- 
ments, opinions, taste, dress, habits, manners, style of living, and 
other points of conduct, that it is called "The Fashion" or "The 
Mode " (modus) ; that is, the measure or pattern in the mind, by 
which its votaries must shape their judgments and their behavior. 
In its particular sphere, it claims to be the standard of thought 
and action, and to represent what is best and most approved in 
character and manners. 

Manifestly, these forms and modes of thinking and acting, thus 
arbitrarily dictated by Fashion, and adopted without inquiry, 
differ widely from those of reason, which prescribes the true mode 
or measure of conduct, itself being the idea or form of man, — 
even taking the word " form " technically in the Baconian sense, 
— as will appear by adverting to the following passage from 
the Novum Organum (Book II. Aph. 1), which passage, however, 
is but a later statement of the doctrine already cited from the 
Delineatio with respect to u the aim of human knowledge : " — 

" Of a given nature to discover the form or true specific differ- 
ence ... is the work and aim of human knowledge." 

But the true specific difference, which is here used as an equiv- 
alent for form, refers to the definition of species by genus and 
difference. Thus man belongs to the genus animal, the different 
tia or characteristic being the reason, and he is therefore defined 
logically "a rational animal." Consequently, the reason is the 
form, and is the true standard and measure of human conduct, all 



456 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 

deviations from which are necessarily error, while conformity to 
such standard — in the regulation of the manners — appears in 
truth and sincerity of speech and behavior, which are in direct 
contrast with the affectations, simulations, and false pretenses of 
" Fashion." 

To the reason, as the form or specific difference, Beatrice al- 
ludes in one of her flings at Benedict. 

" Leon. You must not, sir, mistake my niece ; there is a kind of merry war 
betwixt Signior Benedict and her : they never meet but there 's a skirmish of 
wit between them. 

Beat. Alas, he gets nothing by that. In our last conflict, four of his five 
wits went halting off, and now is the whole man governed with one : so that if 
he have wit enough to keep himself warm let him bear it for a difference between 
himself and his horse ; for it is all the wealth he hath left, to be known a reason- 
able creature.' 9 

On the other hand, the forms of Fashion (with respect to 
apparel), depending on mutable opinion, are thus spoken of: — 

" Borachio. Thou knowest that the fashion of a doublet or a hat, or a cloak, 
is nothing to a man. 

Conrade. Yes, it is apparel. 

Bor. I mean, the fashion. 

Con. Yes, the fashion is the fashion. 

Bor. Tush ! I may as well say, the fool 's the fool. But see'st thou not 
what a deformed thief this fashion is ? how giddily he turns about all the hot 
bloods, between fourteen and five and thirty ? sometimes fashioning them like 
Pharaoh's soldiers, in the reechy painting ; sometimes like god BeVs priests in the 
old church window ; sometimes like the shaven Hercules in the smirch' 'd worm-eaten 
tapestry. 

Con. All this I see ; and I see that the fashion wears out more apparel 
than the man," etc. 

This difference between Fashion and Form is, with respect to 
Man, the same as that which Bacon speaks of, with respect to the 
world at large, in Aphorism 23, Book I. Novum Organum, as 
follows : — 

" There is a great difference between th^idols of the human 
mind and the ideas of the divine, that is to say, between certain 
empty dogmas and the true signatures and marks set upon the 
works of creation as they are found in nature." 

It may be noted that Bacon uses the words idols and ideas 
antithetically ; by idols meaning, not false gods, but, according to 
the original sense of the word, "false appearances, illusions," etc. 
As applied by him, the word refers to the innumerable prejudices, 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 457 

biases, illusions, vain imaginings, and other errors that beset 
the reason, whether arising from its own inherent weakness, or 
from education and condition in life, or from ambiguity of lan- 
guage, or from the authority of false opinions, into which the 
mind is led by fallacious proofs and vicious demonstrations. 

On the other hand, by ideas, a word which in its original sense 
is form, are meant, in its philosophical sense, the mental patterns 
according to which things were created, and as they are found 
really existing in nature. 

It is apparent from the foregoing that the contrast between the 
factitious and the real, which is always a feature of a Shakespear- 
ian play, lies in this comedy between Fashion and Reason, that is, 
between Opinion and Truth, as exemplified in human life and 
manners. 

In a play, moreover, which views life as a " discourse," in 
which the business of the characters is to form opinions about the 
conduct of others as well as to regulate their own, it is manifest 
that the model man is he whose every thought and action are 
governed by right reason, — the distinguishing characteristic of 
man, — and not by fashion and opinion, the product of fancy or 
feeling. 

The deference paid in artificial life to opinion is an excess of 
the spirit of Society, which tends to destroy individuality, to sup- 
press natural emotion, and make it the subject of ridicule ; to 
invest trifles with importance, and treat serious matters with 
levity ; and in short, to establish in the place of reason and nature 
conventional rules of life and conduct ; and this comedy, owing to 
its representation of these features, becomes a direct counterpart 
of As You Like It, the two plays looking at the same subject from 
directly opposite points of view. 

This supposition derives support, also, from the fact that they 
were written in or about the same year. 

In the forest life of Arden, Society is dissolved, public Opinion 
does not exist, and consequently there is no conformity to a gen- 
eral standard; each individual follows-his own fancy and makes 
his pleasure his law; but in Much Ado, we are introduced to a 
ceremonious world of ladies elegantly attired, and gentlemen u of 
the cloak and sword," among whom all usage and behavior are 
subjected to an arbitrary standard, the product of artificial life, 
and resting solely on Opinion. 



458 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 

In Arden, through an excess of individual freedom, man be- 
comes neglectful of social duty; in Mu c h A do, the tyranny of 
Society controls individual feeling and judgment, and blunts the 
kindness and sympathy which should be the rule of manners 
towards one's kind. 

In Arden there is a tendency f roml a life of nature back to 
custom and education ; in Much Ado, there is a tendency from 
conventionalism and artificial manners back to simplicity and 
nature. 

In the matter of invention also, these plays may be contrasted : 
As You Like It illustrating the invention of the fancy, exercised 
for pleasure, and taking as its artistic principle the "form" of a 
Device ; Much Ado illustrating the invention of the reason, exer- 
cised in arguments, and the formation of plans and opinions, and 
taking as its artistic principle the "form " of a Discourse. 

As opinion in high life attains an exceptional force, the social 
virtues and vices that depend upon it also flourish with great 
luxuriance in the same soil. For instance, the force of Opinion 
as a regulator of conduct appears in the love of honor and the 
fear of shame, or in the lighter forms of the desire of admiration 
and the dread of ridicule, — sentiments which acquire their great- 
est strength where character is most sensitive. Honor and regard 
for reputation in some measure usurp the place of duty ; noblesse 
oblige ; but duty is imperative in and of itself, whereas the very 
breath of life of honor depends upon others and exists in Opinion. 
Yet on its observance Society is peremptory ; and with reason, for 
it is on the repute of its members being high-minded and honor- 
able that that trust in each other's good faith and veracity is 
founded, without which Society could not exist. Hence the care 
with which good name is guarded, and the deep offense that is 
given by an imputation of a breach of honor or of the want of it. 
Promises and pledges of one's word are with this class held to be 
the strongest of obligations ; civil law is not looked to for the 
reparation of wrongs, but insult and dishonor are avenged by the 
sword in single combat. « 

Yet in this artificial world where jest and persiflage so much 
prevail, and civility is so often but a hollow courtesy, there is a 
latent distrust of professions, and a general sense of prevalent 
insincerity. And this is marked among the characters of this 
play; as, for instance, when the Prince professes the warmest 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 459 

interest in Claudio's suit to Hero, the latter, who is conscious of 
the levity with which the most serious matters are liable to be 
treated by his companions, has no faith even in his friend and 
benefactor, but says: " You speak this to fetch me in, my lord." 
And it is observable as a point of manners that out of this con- 
sciousness of being distrusted grew the use of oaths in familiar 
conversation, by which originally the speakers hoped to gain 
credit by putting themselves upon their honor and good faith ; 
but these oaths, through fashionable usage, became afterwards 
mere empty and vapid expletives. The dialogue of this picture 
of fashion shows the constant use of these petty and unmeaning 
attestations, — so finished, even ad unguem, is the work of this 
artist. 

The world is made up of phenomena or appearances, which are 
the outward signs and proofs of the inward nature of things, and 
illusory and misleading as these often are, they are the only means 
of arriving at the truth ; but whilst, in the physical world, appear- 
ances do not intentionally deceive, it is far otherwise in the moral 
and social spheres. Sincerity should mould manners and beha- 
vior should reflect the honest sentiments of the heart ; and just 
as men think of others, and entertain for them admiration or 
scorn, should they express in their speech praise or ridicule, and 
in their actions respect or contempt ; but in the world of Fashion, 
which is, par excellence, one of appearance, and exists for shows 
and externals alone, its members habitually veil their thoughts 
and feelings, and, for the sake of complaisance, fall in with the 
tone of those they converse with, as Benedict says to Claudio, 
" In what key shall a man take you to go in a song ? " Fashion- 
able manners constantly accept in apparent good faith the most 
hollow pretenses as realities, while unwelcome truths are with 
equal facility kept out of sight. Dissimulation becomes a rule of 
good breeding, and affectations and insincerities are sanctioned by 
Opinion as indispensable to civility. To cover one's real senti- 
ments and purposes with a conventional manner is the character- 
istic of this realm of false appearance, and on this account it may 
be taken as typical of the deceitfulness of appearances in the 
world at large, and of the fallacious nature of signs and proofs 
by which the judgment is constantly misled into the acceptance 
of error. 

It may be observed that the judgments of " Society " embrace 



460 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 



social and personal qualities as much, if not more, than moral 
ones, and the question is not merely how good or wise or worthy 
or reasonable, but also how witty, graceful, agreeable, beautiful, or 
well bred, or the contrary, is man or woman, and especially what 
is the rank, standing, estate, family, friends, and other like adven- 
titious advantages that can render a person desirable or useful as 
an acquaintance, or eligible as a matrimonial match ; for in this 
comedy a good match is regarded as the central fact of social life, 
and the world of amusement depicted in it has its business, its 
policy, rivalries, and intrigues, of which the most important and 
interesting, especially among the younger and unmarried portion 
of it, have reference to making a good match that shall strengthen 
and secure social position, and be the envy and admiration of 
one's fashionable friends. 

Benedict, communing with himself on marriage, enumerates the 
qualities in a wife, without which he modestly concludes that ma- 
trimony is hardly worth the attention of a sensible man. 

"One woman is fair ; yet I am well : another is wise ; yet I am well : an- 
other virtuous ; yet I am well : but till all graces be in one ivoman, one woman 
shall not come into my grace. Rich she shall be, that 's certain : wise, or I '11 
none ; virtuous, or I '11 never cheapen her ; fair, or I '11 never look on her ; 
mild, or come not near me ; noble, or not I for an angel ; of good discourse, 
an excellent musician, and her hair shall be of what colour it please God." 

Conversation is the amusement of Society, or rather, is Society ; 
and» wit is the faculty most highly prized. In its exercise due 
form and measure ought always to be kept ; but quick wit and 
sound judgment are seldom found together. Nothing is more 
powerful than wit and the pride of wit to mislead the judgment, 
the satirist being both unfeeling and unfair, and seldom hesitating 
to sacrifice truth and character, whether of friend or foe, for a 
bon-mot. 

Superiority of wit is necessarily stimulating to self-love. When 
Pope wrote the lines, — 

" I must be proud to see 
Men, not afraid of God, afraid of me," — 

he expressed not more the power, than the self-admiration, of 
the wit. 

Another source of error in passing judgment on character lies 
in the envy and detraction which in this gay world often weave 
their darkest plots and invent their most defamatory fables, 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 461 

whereby a vast amount of false evidence is put in circulation, 
much of which always gains credence, and the whole of which it is 
hardly ever possible to reach and entirely refute. 

Pride, moreover, a vice inherent in Society, attains in patrician 
circles its utmost altitude of growth, and renders the members of 
the aristocratic class indifferent to the feelings, opinions, or even 
the existence of any beings outside of their own order. When to 
social superiority is added, as in the case of Beatrice, a conscious 
personal superiority of intellect, wit, beauty, or other gifts and 
graces, pride is frequently augmented to a degree of self-esteem 
that looks upon and treats others, however worthy, with the ut- 
most disdain and scorn. Hero says of her : — 

" Nature never fram'd a woman's heart 
Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice : 
Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes, 
Misprising what they look on ; and her wit 
Values itself so highly, that to her 
All matter else seems weak : she cannot love 
Nor take no shape nor project of affection, 
She is so self-endear'd." 

So exaggerated a good opinion of one's self is not merely a 
gross error in itself, it leads in forming opinions of others to 
errors far worse because utterly unjust and injurious. And so we 
find Beatrice, who plumes herself upon her quick apprehension, 
and who says, " I have an- eye ; I can see a church by daylight," 
criticising her suitors with the most contemptuous ridicule, which 
has no warrant in truth, but is indulged simply out of an un- 
feeling wantonness of wit. Hero says of her : — 

" I never yet saw man 
How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featur'd, 
But she would spell him backward : if fair-fae'd, 
She 'd swear the gentleman should be her sister ; 
If black, why, nature, drawing of an antick 
Made a foul blot ; if tall, a lance, ill- headed ; 
If low, an agate very vilely cut ; 
If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds ; 
If silent, why, a block mov'd with none. 
So turns she every man the wrong side out ; 
And never gives to truth and virtue that 
Which simpleness and merit pur chaseth." 

Like all pride, moreover, a high sense of social and personal 
superiority tends to make its possessor heartless and inhuman, 



462 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 






and is capable, under indignity and insult, of the most savage 
revenge. Beatrice, whose family pride has been stung by the 
outrageous insult offered her kinswoman Hero, and who is filled 
with scorn and rage towards Claudio, exclaims : — 

" Is he not approved in the height a villain, that hath slander'd, scorn'd, dis- 
honour'd my kinswoman ? O, that I were a man ! What, bear, her in hand 
until they come to take hands, and then with public accusation, uncover'd 
slander, unmitigated rancour, — O God, that I were a man ! / would eat his 
heart in the market-place" — 

an outburst which would not misbecome, perchance, the mouth 
of " the king of the Cannibal Islands," yet so inhuman is the 
pride of the social class that claims to typify the highest refine- 
ment of manners that the deep reader of the human heart who 
wrote this comedy thinks it not too savage to be out of character 
for the brilliant beauty of the drawing-room. 

The restricted sympathies, moreover, of a class which prides 
itself on its porcelain clay necessarily blinds the judgment to the 
true relations of life and that u good of society" which Bacon 
says " embraceth the form of Human Nature whereof we are 
members and portions," or, in other words, those duties owing 
from man to man as a hu?na?i being, for the form of Human 
Nature or of Man is, as we have seen, the reason which bids us 
live according to our nature or kind, and language itself might 
teach us that the true fashion or rule of conformity for social 
intercourse is kindness or sympathy, of which the complaisance 
of polite society is but a superficial imitation. This accords with 
the laws of nature, and is exemplified in the description of the 
joy of Claudio's uncle, to whom a messenger brings news of the 
great honor the Prince has conferred upon his nephew. 

" Mess. I have already delivered him letters, and there appears much joy 
in him ; even so much that joy could not shew itself modest enough without a 
badge of bitterness. 

Leon. Did he break out into tears ? 

Mess. In great measure. 

Leon. A kind overflow of kindness. There are no faces truer than those 
that are so washed," etc. 

The use in the above passage of the word " modest," in its 
Latin sense of " keeping due measure," is immediately connected 
with the organic idea which makes the due exercise of the reason, 
whether in the formation of a correct opinion or the due indul- 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 463 

gence of feeling, to consist of the true measure being preserved 
between the mind and its objects. 

The Latin modestia, from modus (measure), is moderation, 
and transferred to behavior means unassuming conduct, and 
towards others kindness (vide Andrews' Lat. Lex. in v.), quali- 
ties that are conspicuous in Hero, whose marked feature is her 
modesty. 

The want of moderation, on the other hand, is portrayed in 
the most spirited manner in Leonato and Antonio (ActV. Sc. 1). 
Leonato, in his grief, rejects all counsel. He says : — 

" Give me no counsel. 
My griefs cry louder than advertisement." 

Antonio tells him, — 

"Therein do men from children nothing differ " — 

thus pointing to the mature reason as the true form of man. 

In this world, where Opinion bears such sway, judgments on 
character, inasmuch as they particularly affect the happiness of 
their subjects, should always be founded on the strongest and 
surest evidence : and the same rigorous rule which the experi- 
mental philosopher applies to the investigation of causes in the 
physical world for the discovery of the " form," is equally neces- 
sary in examining causes in the human world ; yet in many, per- 
haps in most cases, the opinions that float through society — not 
merely fashionable society, but the community in general — are 
hardly more than conjecture and surmise, being seldom grounded 
on experience or direct evidence, and supported only by vague 
rumor, gossip, or other untrustworthy proof. This is notably true 
of reports affecting reputation, about which men adopt beliefs 
upon hearsay, and seldom measure their estimates of others by 
any true knowledge of what they actually are. Such opinions 
are of the nature of the conjectures, probabilities, and false ap- 
pearances which are the product of false methods of proof, and of 
which Bacon speaks so often as making up the bulk of human 
knowledge, and as besetting the human mind to the exclusion of 
the truth, which last must be derived from close inquiry and 
strict test, which in a vast majority of cases in the moral world 
can never be made; so that the mass of men are led by authority 
and general consent; they fall into the current, and think and do 
as they see others think and do, and follow the fashion in opinion 



464 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 

as they do in dress. But to know men and to be able to count 
upon their actions, — for the most important use of knowledge of 
causes is to forecast the future with respect to human actions, 
and know whether men will abet us or thwart us, — we must pen- 
etrate their motives, and detect beneath the smooth surface of 
polite manners the passions which are their springs of action and 
which witness their true natures. And as the true measure of 
likings and dislikes is, as was shown in As You Like It, that 
amount of emotion which exactly answers to the worth of the 
object, so in forming opinions the true estimate of the object is 
that which is determined by careful examination and proof, to 
the end that the conceptions of the mind may be made exactly to 
match with the reality. 

And in this way only can it be fairly judged how far men's 
behavior and fashions comply with the standard of reason, or the 
true nature and "form " of man. 

Whether the writer of this comedy had in his mind during its 
composition the antithesis between fashion, as equivalent to 
opinio?!, and form in its metaphysical sense, as equivalent to 
truth, will no doubt be questioned : but that the play exhibits a 
contrast between Opinion and false appearance on the one hand, 
and reason and truth on the other, can hardly be doubted by any 
one who will fairly examine the piece ; yet the latter contrast differs 
from the first only in being expressed in ordinary language. 

So confessedly one of doubt is the world of opinion, so imper- 
fect is our knowledge of causes, so incomprehensible in its totality 
is the scheme of nature, that we entertain an habitual distrust that 
our best-laid plans may go astray, and therefore refer the issue of 
all human projects to the dominion of chance. The event alone 
can give assurance of success, and prove the wisdom of our 
schemes. In like manner, proofs and probabilities gain accept- 
ance just so far as they accord with what experience teaches us is 
the uniform sequence of nature, or the usual current of events. 
This is called in the play u the frame of nature," and is the back- 
ground to the world of fashion, custom, and conventionalism therein 
depicted. Of this " frame of nature," human nature in its sim- 
plicity and truth is a part, and in the play particularly appears in 
those cries of grief and pain, those spontaneous utterances and 
outbreaks of indignation, — in short, that voice of nature which 
follows the heinous calumny against Hero, whose family and 



V 



V 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 465 

friends at once drop all compliment and ceremony, and stand 
ready with hand and sword to avenge the insult. 

On the side of the inanimate world, also, this " frame of nature " 
or arrangement of things appears in the accidental interposition 
of trifling events that are decisive of the gravest matters, as in the 
chance which brings the Watch to overhear Borachio's confession 
to Conrade of his villainy, whilst they shelter themselves under 
u a pent-house " from a passing shower. 

In the foregoing remarks upon some of the causes which oper- 
ate in Society to mislead and pervert the judgment in the forma- 
tion of opinions, will be found, it is believed, the moral and social 
principles which predominate in the world of Fashion (or of 
Opinion and False Appearances) and which underlie the char- 
acters and incidents of the piece ; on which account the play is a 
good model or typical picture of those idola or false appearances, 
or of that condition of human knowledge spoken of by Bacon, 
11 where the mind is, through the daily intercourse and conver- 
sation of life, occupied with unsound doctrines, and beset on all 
sides with vain imaginings." Preface to Nov. Org. 

The argument of the play may be thus briefly stated : Don 
Pedro, Prince of Arragon, returning with his suite from the field, 
where he has gained a victory, and where Claudio, his favorite, 
had won great honor, stops at Messina, and becomes the guest of 
Leonato, the governor of the city. Hospitalities and entertain- 
ments follow, during which a match between Claudio and Hero, 
Leonato's daughter, is brought about by the influence of the 
Prince, who also contrives a match between Benedict, one of the 
gentlemen of his train, and Beatrice, Leonato's niece. This couple 
are habitual satirists of love and marriage, and much sport is an- 
ticipated from their change of opinion on this subject when both 
the gentleman and lady shall have been persuaded through a 
skillful working upon their pride and vanity to believe that each 
entertains for the other a consuming though secret passion, which 
neither will reveal through fear of the ridicule it will excite. 
This stratagem is successful, but Don John, a bastard brother of 
the Prince, who has a secret grudge against Claudio for hav- 
ing supplanted him in the favor of his brother, counterplots in 
order to break up the match between him and Hero, and to that 
end causes the Prince and Claudio to witness an interview at 
midnight between Borachio, one of his servants, and a counter- 
30 



466 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 

feit Hero, who in fact is Margaret, an attendant on Hero, and 
who. through the favor Borachio enjoys with her. is persuaded by 
him to personate her mistress, and in her name address him as her 
lover. The Prince and Claudio are deceived by this artifice, and, 
enraged at what they consider an attempt upon their honor in 
palming off a worthless woman as a bride, resolve to expose her 
the next day in the church at the time of the nuptial ceremony. 
This plan they carry out. and in a moment the gay and joyous 
company, who had been all smiles and courtesy to each other, 
drop the affectations and insipidities of society, and words of 
native passion leap from their hearts. Hero swoons, the Prince 
and Claudio retire, all is grief and rage, when the Friar, who 
was present to perform the ceremony, having watched Hero, 
and being persuaded of her innocence by her changes of color and 
other proofs, suggests the plan of reporting her death, and of 
performing a mock funeral, which, he alleges, will work a change 
in the feelings of Claudio. and at any rate will disarm disappro- 
bation. At this juncture, the City Watch patrolling the streets. 
chance to overhear Borachio confessing to a comrade the villainy 
he had perpetrated, and they thereupon arrest him. This leads 
to a recognition and proof of Hero's innocence, and all at last 
ends happily. 

Wit is the staple of which this comedy is wrought, and gossip. 
news-telling, and tale-bearing are the motive powers of the piece. 
The plot is carried forward wholly by hearsay : that is. by con- 
versations that are overheard and repeated and taken at second- 
hand. The brief conference of the Prince and Claudio with 
regard to the latter's suit to Hero is overheard both by Antonio 
and Borachio. and repeated by the one to Leonato. by the other to 
Don John: the wooing of Hero by the Prince is overheard and 
repeated to Claudio : Benedict and Beatrice are both entangled in 
the plot laid for them by overhearing the opinions of others 
respecting themselves and their mutual liking: Claudio and the 
Prince are led to condemn Hero bv overhearing the conversation 
between Margaret and Borachio : and the Watch overhears the 
villain's confesMon of the stratagem, which leads to Hero's vindi- 
cation, and the eclaircissement of all difficulties. So, too. the esti- 
mates the characters place upon each other are made up from 
rumors, tales, and gossip. It is thus apparent that the opinions 
and actions of the characters are determined by proofs of the 
most loose and superficial kind. 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 467 

The dialogue of the piece is for the first three acts a light and 
sparkling conversation, composed of jest, raillery, and badinage. 
By witty disparagement, or good-natured personalities, the char- 
acters seek to put the laugh upon one another, or they discuss 
the social merits of acquaintances, or they devise love-matches, or 
their talk is of the fashion of apparel, of rabatos and headtires, 
and, in Margaret's phrase, of " gowns of cloth of gold, set with 
pearls, down sleeves, side sleeves and skirts under-borne round 
with a bluish tinsel." With the exception of the last two acts, 
in which the characters leave the world of Fashion and frivolity 
and reenter, so to speak, the world of serious feeling, the play is 
a warfare of words and skirmishes of wit, a rattling fire of jests, 
retorts, and repartees, for which the best occasion is offered in the 
banquets and festivities given by Leonato for the entertainment 
of Don Pedro and his suite. 

As for the characters, they are high-bred and fashionable gen- 
tlemen and ladies, accustomed to the habits and manners of arti- 
ficial life, according to the style of three centuries ago. In their 
speech and mental associations they all bear a social stamp. The 
gentlemen, though they " will lie awake ten nights to carve the 
fashion of a doublet," are neither excessive fops nor much of cox- 
combs ; they are of a higher type than the modern beau, although 
a distinguished military authority has said that the dandies fight 
amazingly well when put to it. In Elizabeth's time fashion could 
boast among its votaries a Raleigh and a Sidney, and the young 
gallants of this play are soldiers who have returned from a vic- 
torious field in which they have done manly service. They now 
give themselves up to recreation and seem to exist only for enjoy- 
ment. They are young, gay, brave, careless, good-humored, and 
witty, — in which last respect the ladies, especially Beatrice, are 
fully a match for them. Their obedience to form, their sub- 
serviency to opinion and fashion, their habit of living for the ap- 
probation of others, for pride and self-love, have rendered their 
views of life and even their sentiments conventional ; with them 
love has little fervor and no romance, and marriage is not so 
much an affair of the heart as an alliance of family to be brought 
about by intrigue and influence. Claudio, the favorite of the 
Prince, affects a liking for Hero, the daughter of Leonato, but, 
with that deference to opinion which necessarily prevails in a 
society in which individuals live more for others than for them- 



468 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 

selves, lie is desirous of sustaining his own preference by the 
favorable regard of others, and he therefore asks Benedict what 
he thinks of the lady ; that gentleman, out of a habit of banter, 
ridicules the choice and professes himself unable to see in the 
ladv any merit whatever, and, in order to gain still more mirth 
out of the matter, at once communicates the secret to the Prince, 
that he may join in the raillery. The Prince, however, promises 
his influence to the lover, but he, prudent man, is first careful to 
inquire how far the lady is likely to prove a good match by being 
heir to Leonato. 

" Claud. Has Leonato any son, my lord ? 

D. Pedro. Xo child but Hero : she 9 s his only heir. 

Dost thou affect her, Claudio ? " 

Upon receiving an affirmative reply the Prince, without hesita- 
tion, promises the lady to him, though it is manifest that neither 
herself nor her family had ever been apprised of Claudio's inten- 
tions toward her. 

" Prince. If thou dost love fair Hero, cherish it, 
And I will break with her and with her father, 
And thou shalt have her.'' 

And it is thereupon arranged that at a masquerade that night 
the Prince should assume the part of Claudio and woo the lady 
for him. The passage is a good instance of the formation of a 
plan, to be followed by immediate practice. 

" D. Pedro. I will assume thy part in some disguise, 
And tell fair Hero I am Claudio ; 
And in her bosom I '11 unclasp my heart 
And take her hearing prisoner with the force 
And strong encounter of my amorous tale ; 
Then after to her father will I break ; 
And the conclusion is, she shall be thine. 
In practice let us put it presently." 

This conversation, which takes place in the street before Leo 
nato's house, is overheard ; and it is a good illustration of the 
rumors that pervade Society and shape the course of the actors 
in it. that the news of the Prince's intention is carried almost 
simultaneously though in different versions, one to the family of 
the lady, the other to Don John. 

The story, as repeated to Leonato, runs as follows : — 

"Antonio. Brother. I can tell you news that you yet dream not of. 
Leonato. Are thev good ? 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 469 

Ant. As the event stamps them ; but they have a good cover ; they show well 
outward. The Prince and Claudio, walking in a thick-pleached alley, in my 
orchard, were thus overheard by a man of mine : The Prince discovered to 
Claudio that he loved my niece, your daughter, and meant to acknowledge it this 
night in a dance ; and if he found her accordant, he meant to take the present 
time by the top and instantly break with you of it. 

Leon. Hath the fellow any wit that told you this ? 

Ant. A good sharp fellow," etc. 

This is an instance of a story utterly false getting into circula- 
tion on seemingly good authority, and is a piece of most deceptive 
hearsay evidence. Leonato in his joy can hardly credit the good 
fortune that is to befall his house, but still " will acquaint his 
daughter withal that she may be the better prepared for an 
answer, if peradventure this be true." 

The other version of the story is carried to Don John : — 

" Borachio. Being entertained for a perfumer, as I was smoking a musty 
room, comes me the Prince and Claudio, hand in hand, in sad conference : I 
whipt behind the arras, and there heard it agreed upon that the Prince should 
woo Hero for himself, and having obtained her give her to Count Claudio" 

It seems that Borachio having somewhere picked up the story 
(a false version, however) diversifies it with circumstances that 
are evidently framed in his own head. 

Don John, a morose villain, takes some pleasure in this intelli- 
gence, as he hopes it will furnish " a model to build mischief on." 

The preconcerted plan is carried out ; the Prince woos in 
Claudio's name and is accepted, of course, by Hero, who had 
been prepared with an answer in a family consultation ; imme- 
diately after the Prince obtains Leonato's consent that Claudio 
marry his daughter, all is satisfactory to all concerned, and the 
affair is settled with the least possible expenditure of sentiment. 
True, Don John, overhearing his brother's suit to Hero, mali- 
ciously tells Claudio that Don Pedro had sworn his affection to 
Hero ; a story that Borachio improves upon by saying that Don 
Pedro had sworn " that he would marry her that night," where- 
upon Claudio experiences a mild attack of jealousy, sufficient, 
however, to furnish a theme for ridicule to Benedict, who also 
hears and repeats the same rumor. Nor is Benedict in the least 
surprised that the Prince, as he says, " had stolen the bird's nest," 
which the other had shown hi in. nor does he evince the least sym- 
pathy with the forsaken lover except to offer to accompany him 
to the conventional " willow," in order to secure the necessary 
garland. 



470 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 

" Bene. Count Claudio ? 

Claud. Yea, the same. 

Bene. Come, will you go with me ? 

Claud. Whither? 

Bene. Even to the next willow, about your own business, Count? What 
fashion will you wear the garland of ? About your neck, like an usurer's 
chain ? or under your arm, like a lieutenant's scarf ? You must wear it one 
way, for the Prince hath got your Hero. 

Claud, I wish him joy of her. 

Bene. Why, that 's spoken like an honest drover ; so they sell bullocks. 
But did you think the Prince would have served you thus ? " 

Claudio himself comments on what he is led to think has been 
the Prince's want of faith. 

" 'T is certain so ; the Prince woos for himself. 
Friendship is constant in all other things 
Save in the office and affairs of love : 
Therefore, all hearts in love use their own tongues : 
Let every eye negotiate for itself, 
And trust no agent : for beauty is a witch 
Against whose charms faith melteth into blood. 
This is an accident of hourly proof, 
Which I mistrusted not." 

Here is seen the thoroughly worldly habit of mind, which looks 
upon human intercourse as governed, notwithstanding its fine 
speeches, by policy and self-love; and Claudio rather blames him- 
self for his own simplicity than the Prince for proving false under 
the temptation of beauty. 

This disturbance of the harmony of the parties, however, is but 
momentary ; the truth soon comes out ; and the following is the 
business-like style in which the match is concluded : — 

" D. Pedro. Here, Claudio, I have woo'd in thy name, and fair Hero is won ; 
I have broke with her father and his good will obtained : name the day of 
marriage and God give thee joy ! 

Leon. Count, take of me my daughter and with her my fortunes ; his grace 
hath made the match, and all grace say Amen to it ! " 

Discourse or conversation has brilliant representatives in Bea- 
trice, a niece of Leonato, and Benedict, a gentleman in the suite 
of the Prince. Beatrice displays the spirit of aristocratic Soci- 
ety ; its pride, disdain, and heartless ridicule ; while in Benedict 
there is mora pleasantry and disposition to amuse. They are 
both gifted with inexhaustible wit, though different in kind and 
modified by their dispositions respectively ; Beatrice delighting 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 471 

to indulge her great quickness of apprehension in cutting gibes 
and sarcasms, and Benedict, of more genial temper and more 
humorous fancy, reveling in images so ludicrous that their very 
hyperbole proves how little real bitterness there is in his sallies. 
Beatrice is witty because, conscious of her powers, she is proud to 
exhibit them and make them felt ; but Benedict is witty because, 
being naturally a humorist, his thoughts always flow in a witty 
channel. He is as brilliant in soliloquy as when calling up his 
powers to entertain his companions or cope with them in repartee. 
They are both sworn foes to love and matrimony ; Benedict pro- 
fesses himself " a tyrant to the sex," and congratulates himself on 
his bachelorhood, and Beatrice, on her side, mocks all her wooers 
out of suit. She had rather, she says, " hear her dog bark at a 
crow than a man swear he loves her." They never meet without 
a sharp encounter, in which, besides expressing mutual disdain, 
they give free play to their scorn for all tenderness of sentiment 
generally. In the opinion of each, there is not one of the opposite 
sex that is worthy of love or trust. But these opinions are held 
by them through mere force of will ; they rest on no proof nor 
experience nor conviction. It is in this point they become imper- 
sonations of false opinion and a departure from the true stand- 
ard of reason, occasioned by pride of wit and the railing spirit of 
Society. Without love and marriage, Society would lose its ele- 
gance, its charm, its endeavor to please. To deride them is an 
abuse of wit, a perversion of ridicule, which is itself the fittest 
theme of ridicule. Benedict and Beatrice are the exponents of 
this error and the mark at which the satire of the play is aimed. 

Both gentleman and lady, under their affectation, vanity, and 
assumed opinions, possess strong and earnest natures, but their 
" wit values itself so highly that to them all matters else seem 
weak." 

Benedict's habitual disparagement of women awakens all the 
disdain and derision of Beatrice, who, both for the honor of her 
sex and her love of sarcasm, pursues him with such unsparing 
gibes that he flies her presence. He cannot endure, he says, " my 
Lady Tongue." And he takes occasion to describe her malice 
and temper with a lavish outpouring of satirical humor. 

"O, she misused me past the endurance of a block : an oak, with but one 
green leaf on it, would have answered her ; my very visor began to assume 
life and scold with her : She told me, not thinking I had boon myself, that I 



472 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 

was the Prince's jester, and that I was duller than a great thaw ; huddling 
jest upon jest with such impossible conveyance upon me, that I stood like a 
man at a mark, with a whole army shooting* at me : She speaks poniards and 
every word stabs : if her breath were as terrible as her terminations, there 
were no living near her ; she would infect to the north star. I would not 
marry her though she were endowed with all that Adam had left him before 
he transgressed ; she would have made Hercules have turned spit ; yea, and 
have cleft his club to make the fire too. Come, talk not of her ; you shall find 
her the infernal Ate' in good apparel. I would to God some scholar would 
conjure her ; for, certainly, while she is here, a man may live as quiet in hell 
as in a sanctuary; and people sin upon purpose because they would go thither ; 
so, indeed, all disquiet, horror, and perturbation follow her." 

This is clearly the indulgence by a wit of his faculty quite as 
much with the intent to amuse as to vent his spite. Admirers of 
wit as they are, they cannot but admire each other, but stung 
with each other's sarcasms, they mistake this play and fence of 
mind for expressions of real aversion, and remain insensible to 
one another's sterling good qualities. 

Yet notwithstanding they hold the whole world in scorn, this 
bright and astute pair are exposed to attack through their self- 
admiration, and upon this foible their friends play in order to 
work a change in their sentiments. The chief diversion afforded 
by the piece and one of the main illustrations of the influence of 
hearsay proof upon the formation of opinion are derived from a 
plan devised by the Prince to bring about a love-match between 
these two apparently incorrigible scoffers at love and marriage, 
and thus render them the " argument of their own scorn." This 
is obviously in accordance with the idea of a " discourse," which 
is, by proof, to form opinion and determine conduct. And in the 
case of Benedict and Beatrice, it is effected by each being adroitly 
made to overhear a " fictitious dialogue," from which, as hearsay 
evidence, they each learn that the other, under the guise of dis- 
dain or indifference, conceals a most desperate passion, which, 
however, neither the sufferer nor the sufferer's friends will permit 
to be revealed on account of the proud and contemptuous spirit 
with which it is sure to be met. And the sport the plotters an- 
ticipate is to be found in " the dumb show " to which these inde- 
fatigable talkers will be reduced when they hold " an opinion of 
one another's dotage and no such matter." 

This double attack upon vanity and pride, coupled with what 
both gentleman and lady take for unquestionable proof of the 



' 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 473 

other's sentiments, is entirely successful ; Benedict concludes at 
once that " the world must be peopled " and that he ought to 
marry ; and Beatrice, sinking her pride of wit in ingenuous shame 
at hearing herself so censured, determines to see in Benedict more 
than she can learn from hearsay. 

" For others say thou dost deserve, and I 
Believe it better than reportingly." 

These scenes are certainly good instances of those "actual 
types and models " which Bacon describes as the subject matter 
of the Fourth and Fifth Parts of his Instauration and as means 
by which the entire process of the mind and the ivhole fabric and 
order of invention . . . should be set, as it were, before the eyes. 

For the influence over the mind of opinion and mere hearsay 
evidence, received without being put to any test, can surely be 
never set forth in a more apposite and striking "type and model" 
than in the case of Benedict and Beatrice, who are made to over- 
hear certain testimony, which, however, is entirely unsupported by 
facts, but which causes these sharp and quick-witted people to 
change their cherished opinions and alter their whole course of life. 

In the exercise of judgment, the mind cannot escape being 
biased " by an infusion of the will and affections," so that instead 
of guiding the will it is more frequently bent by the will to its 
own wishes. As Bacon puts it (treating of idola), " The human 
understanding is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the 
will and affections, whence proceed sciences which may be called 
4 sciences as one would.' For what a man had rather were true, 
he more readily believes" (Nov. Org. Book I. Aph. 49). There- 
fore in addition to the various disturbing causes already men- 
tioned that deflect the judgment, such as feeling, interest, preju- 
dice, imagination, there may be also taken whim, willfulness, and 
pride of opinion, — of which last Benedict is a noted example. 
He does not hold to his " simple true judgment," but affects an 
opinion and cultivates a custom of disparaging women. He will- 
fully assumes that all womankind is to be distrusted, and says that 
u this opinion fire cannot melt out of him ; he will die in it at the 
stake." But the Prince, who knows men and knows also how 
readily opinions yield to self-love or interest, tells him that u he 
will temporise with the hours ; " and that though "he is an ob- 
stinate heretic in despite of beauty," he cannot u maintain his 
part but in the force of his will" As soon therefore as, by the 



474 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 






device of the Prince, Benedict's sentiments are attacked through 
his pride and vanity, this " obstinate heretic " drops his opinions, 
turns completely round, and becomes the argument of his own rid- 
icule. This is but an exemplification of those idola, those illu- 
sions and willful opinions that beset the mind, but which, resting on 
no solid reasons, are ever ready to shift at the bidding of, feeling 
or even of whim. Another instance where the will is made to 
stand for argument may be cited in the case of even the gentle 
Hero. She is discussing with her attendant, Margaret, the all im- 
portant point of the most becoming wedding-attire. Margaret 
says : — 

" I think your other rabato were better. 

Hero. No, pray thee, good Meg, I '11 wear this. 

Marg. By my troth, it is not so good ; and I warrant your cousin will say so. 

Hero. My cousin is a fool and thou art another ; 

I HI wear none but this." 

The Prince is a fine character. Bred in a Court and well ac- 
quainted with those types of character that Court life fosters, he 
yet has retained his simplicity and is a kind and courteous gentle- 
man; he has abundant wit which always aims at mirth and never 
at sarcasm, but, like the others, he adopts opinions without due 
inquiry, and is therefore led into great wrong towards Hero. He 
thus speaks his conviction to Leonato. 

" My heart is sorry for your daughter's death. 
But on my honour, she was charg'd with nothing 
But what was true and very full of proof " 

In his case the error arises mainly from the deceit of the senses ; 
he mistakes in the imperfect light Margaret for Hero. 

Amid all the volubility and wit of this comedy, two foils are 
introduced, — one the taciturn and sullen villain Don John, who 
describes himself as " not of many words" and the other Dog- 
berry, who, lacking no words, would, on the contrary, be grievously 
tautological were it not that his confusion both of thought and 
language reduces all he says to self-contradiction. Dogberry and 
"his ancient and quiet watch " are the ideal of circumlocution, 
the sublime of official blundering, the true growth of a long set- 
tled order of things. The substitution of artificial customs and 
manners for nature, which obtains among the votaries of Fashion, 
receives the directest and fullest expression in Dogberry's com- 
ments upon the qualifications of worthy George Seacoal for con- 
stable. 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 475 

" Come hither, neighbour Seacoal. God hath given you a good name ; to be a 
well-favoured man is the gift of Fortune, but to write and read comes by nature." 

Dogberry, moreover, puts before us distinctly the great preva- 
lence of scandalous reports and rumors in society. 

14 D. Pedro. Officer, what offence have these men committed ? 

Dogb. Marry, sir, they have committed false report ; moreover, they have 
spoken untruths ; secondarily, they are slanders ; sixth and lastly, they have 
belied a lady ; thirdly, they have verified unjust things ; and to conclude, they 
are lying knaves. 

D. Pedro. First, I ask thee what they have done ; thirdly, I ask thee 
what 's their offence ; sixth and lastly, why are they committed ; and, to con- 
clude, what you lay to their charge ? 

Claud. Rightly reasoned, and in his own division." 

This parody of the " divisions " of a " discourse " is obviously 
in keeping with the idea of the play. 

Dogberry, whose opaque understanding is the foil to the keen 
wit of the others, is himself the one inextinguishable joke of the 
play. He is the negative of wit. Any analysis of his character 
would be, indeed, superfluous, but it may be noted that his regard 
for appearances and externals, and the importance he attaches to 
trifles, render him a representative man, the product of an old 
and fixed system of things, in which abuses have grown hoary 
and in which only fashion and state and ancientry can flourish in 
full perfection. Noteworthy, too, are the artistic skill and scien- 
tific accuracy with which the poet harmonizes this humorous com- 
pound of ignorance and self-complacency with the general tone of 
his play. For, if we look closely, we shall detect the same prin- 
ciple at work, though conversely, in the blunders of Dogberry, 
that is seen in the finest flashes of Benedict or Beatrice. Wit 
is usually defined as a perception of likeness in things dissimilar, 
which, by its unexpectedness, excites surprise and consequent 
pleasure. Wit brings together and matches things not ordinarily 
connected, by some ludicrous or fanciful resemblance it affects tor 
the moment to find between them ; and this connection or match- 
ing may be made either by thoughts or words. Now this IS what 
Dogberry is constantly, though unconsciously, doing, lit 4 uses 
terms to denote one and the same thing, which arc, in faot, 
directly contradictory of each other. lie thus, by sheer blunder- 
ing, effects or rather enables the reader to effect or perceive an 
identity in opposites, the identity being in the thought and the 
opposition in the words. Thus, if a quotation may be permitted. 



476 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 



. 



he instructs the Watch to " make no noise in the streets, for, for 
the watch to babble and talk is most tolerable, and not to be en- 
dured." Here the reader finds an identity in the contradictory 
words by perceiving that Dogberry uses them for one and the 
same thing. 

Another instance may be given as illustrative of contradiction 
in the thought. 

" If you meet a thief, you may suspect him by virtue of your office to be no 
true man : for such kind of men the less you -make or meddle with them why the 
more for your honesty." 

Here the contradiction arises clearly between what should be 
the conduct of a private citizen in avoiding the company of a 
thief and that of the same person as an officer of the law ; and 
these contradictory notions are brought into identity through the 
confusion of mind that is unable to distinguish between them. 
Such blundering applications of contradictory words to one iden- 
tical thing are the direct reverse of a pun, which applies the same 
word or succession of syllables to contrary things. But accord- 
ing to logicians, a pun is a species of syllogism, — a fallacy, to 
use scholastic language. — founded on the equivocation of the 
middle term. In like manner, perhaps, Dogberry's blunders may 
be regarded as negative wit, the opposite pole, intellectually, of 
that quick apprehension that couples dissimilar objects or thoughts 
by some remote resemblance of a ludicrous or fanciful kind, and, 
in fact, they produce a like pleasant surprise, and move our 
laughter on the same principle that wit does. 

Dogberry's statement of his standing in society, in vindication 
of himself against the irreverent charge of Conrade that he was 
c * an ass," presents too superlative a summary of his qualities 
mental and moral, and exhibits a character too firmly wedged 
and mortised into the social structure and fixed order of things 
to be overpassed without quotation. It is obvious that the effect 
depends upon the anti-climax in the measure of the properties he 
gives himself. 

••' I am a wise fell on: • and. which is more, an officer : and, which is more, a 
householder ; and. which is more, as pretty o piece of flesh as any is in Messina ; 
and one that knows the law, go to ; and a rich fellow enough, go to ; and a fellow 
that hath had losses ; and one that hath two gowns and every thing handsome 
about him. Bring him away. O, that I had been writ down an ass." 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 477 

Though all the talkative and witty people in this play are con- 
stantly engaged in saying sharp things to and about each other, 
yet the silent Don John says the sharpest thing of all, for his 
disparagement, malicious and not merry, almost kills an innocent 
lady. Don John, in contrast with the votaries of mode and 
fashion around him, is a non-conformist. He will not " fashion 
his carriage to rob love from any." He says : — 

" I can not hide what I am : I must be sad when I have cause and smile at 
no man's jests ; eat when I have stomach and wait for no man's leisure ; 
sleep when I am drowsy and tend on no man's business ; laugh when I am 
merry and claw no man in his humour." 

Such is his theory of selfish and unsocial independence, and of 
course he is a foil to that cast of character which conforms to a 
common standard. At the same time his character is as much 
opposed to the true and sympathetic nature of man as it is to the 
complaisance of artificial life. 

Right thinking is the basis of right acting ; but we cannot 
think rightly unless we see clearly, for, as Bacon says, u all de- 
pends upon keeping the eye steadily fixed upon the facts of nature, 
and so receiving their images simply as they are " (Plan of 
Work). And hence the necessity of great caution in judging by 
appearances, as is particularly exemplified in Don John's plot to 
break up the match between Claudio and Hero. Don John had 
said that " any bar, any cross, any impediment " to their mar- 
riage "would be medicinal to him," and Borachio, his servant, 
" whose spirits," like his master's, " toil in frame of villainies," 
suggests that Don John accuse Hero to the Prince and Claudio 
of disloyalty, adding : — 

" They will hardly believe this without trial ; offer them instances ; which 
shall bear no less likelihood than to see me at her chamber-window ; hear me 
call Margaret, Hero ; hear Margaret term me Borachio ; and bring them to 
see this the very night before the intended wedding ; for, in the mean time, I 
will so fashion the matter, that Hero shall be absent, etc. 

D. John. Grow this to what adverse issue it can, I will put it in practice." 

And the following narrative, made by the villain to a comrade 
after drinking too much (the name Borachio, in the Italian, sig- 
nifies "a bottle"), is descriptive of the manner ho carried out the 
project : — 

"Know, that I have to-night woo'd Margaret, the lady Hero's gentlewoman, 
by the name of Hero; she leans me out of her mistress 1 chamber-window, 



478 MUCH ADO ABOUT XOTHIXG. 

bids rne a thousand times good-night, — I tell this tale vilely : — I should first 
tell thee how the Prince, Claudio and my master, planted, and placed, and pos- 
sessed by my master Don John, saw afar off in the orchard this amiable en- 
counter. 

Con. And thought they Margaret was Hero ? 

Bor. Two of them did, the Prince and Claudio, but the devil my master 
knew she was Margaret ; and partly by his oaths, which first possessed them. 
partly by the dark night, which did deceive them, but chiefly by my villainy, 
which did confirm any slander that Don John had made, away went Claudio 
enraged," etc. 

This plot, which, consists of assertions, upheld by oaths and 
seeming proofs, is entirely analogous to "a discourse. " ? 

In this comedy, love as a passion has no place and exhibits no 
generosity of sentiment. The mutual preference of Claudio and 
Hero involves no breaking of hearts, and would never tempt either 
of them to violate social decorum and usage. It rests on pride, 
and could not exist without the approbation of others. Therefore 
it is pride only that is injured by the slanders of Don John ; there 
is hardly a trace to be discovered in either of them of wounded 
affection. Claudio" s conduct towards Hero is heartless and incon- 
siderate, and evidently is due to an ebullition of wounded pride. 
So. too. Beatrice's pride blaze* high and fierce at the insult offered 
her kinswoman, and. dropping all empty talk, insists upon her 
lover " killing Claudio/' whilst the old Leonato is almost frantic 
with shame at the disgrace put upon his house. In these scenes 
nature reasserts herself and breaks through the fetters of ceremony 
and custom ; polite and courteous phrases are forgotten ; banter 
and the jest are silent, and words that speak the genuine passions 
of the soul leap from the lips of the injured parties. 

Out of a desire to maintain opinions and persuade others grows 
the Art of Rhetoric, which art is a branch of the more general 
doctrine of The Transmission of Knowledge, according to the 
Baconian division of the sciences. JIuch Ado is a play which is 
a dramatic "discourse." of which the business of the characters 
is to mould each other's opinions. It must be borne in mind, 
however, that the writing of this comedy antedates any known 
work of Bacon's in which he sets forth scientifically, with division 
and subdivision, his tenets on that branch of logical art. which, 
as he says. •• includes all the arts that relate to words and dis- 
." and which he styles M the transmission of knowledge;" 
yet the resemblances which the play affords to such tenets are 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 479 

hardly less particular and specific than if the play-writer had had 
the doctrine formulated before him. 

But first, we may observe the influence of this notion of the 
transmission of knowledge upon the action and movement of 
the piece, which both opens and closes with the introduction of 
important news brought by a Messenger ; while messages and 
errands frequently occur among the dramatis personal throughout 
the play ; even Benedict and Beatrice are sent with messages. 

Bacon's Art of Transmission is divided into the Organ, the 
Method, and the Adornment or Illustration of Discourse. 

This latter comprises Rhetoric, an art " which handleth reason 
as it is planted in popular opinions and manners" Advance- 
ment, p. 300. 

Of Rhetoric, Bacon remarks that " it has been excellently well 
laboured," and that he has no deficiencies to note " in the rules 
and use of the art itself ; " but inasmuch as he does not set forth 
these rules, we must go for them to other treatises, and there 
being none more celebrated than that of Aristotle, that author will 
be here followed. 

" Reasonings are derived from four sources, and these four 
are probability, example, proof positive, and signs." Aris. Rhet. 
Book II. ch. xxv. 

These four sources of reasoning are exemplified in the play. Of 
proof by signs, and of the world's easy fashion of judging in an 
off-hand way from appearances, there is a good instance in the 
raillery with which the Prince and Claudio prove Benedict in 
love. 

" Claudio. If he be not in love with some woman, there is no believing in 
old signs. He brushes his hat o' mornings : What should that bode ? 

I). Pedro. Hath any man seen him at the barber's ? 

Claud. No, but the barber's man hath been seen with him ; and the old 
ornament of his cheek hath already stuff'd tennis-balls. 

Leon. Indeed, he looks younger than he did by the loss of a beard. 

D. Pedro. Nay, he rubs himself with civet : Can you smell him out by that ? 

Claud. That 's as much as to say, the sweet youth 's in love. 

D. Pedro. The greatest note of it is his melancholy. 

Claud. And when was he wont to wash his face ? 

D. Pedro. Yea, or to paint himself ? for the which I know what they say 
of him. 

Claud. Nay, but his jesting spirit, winch has now crept into a lute-string, 
and now governed by stops. 

D.Pedro. Indeed, that tells a heavy tale for him. Conclude he is in love. 

Act III. So. 2. 



480 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 

The evidence of the senses which the Prince and Claudio have, 
or think they have, of Hero's guilt from witnessing the interview 
between her, as they suppose, and Borachio, may stand for an 
instance of u proof positive" The Prince tells Leonato: — 

" I am sorry you must hear : Upon mine honour 
Myself, my brother, and this griev'd Count 
Did see her, hear her, at that hour last night 
Talk with a ruffian at her chamber-window," etc. 

Act IV. Sc. 1. 

With respect to arguments from example, Aristotle ob- 
serves : — 

" Reasonings drawn by inference from similarity of circum- 
stances, whether in one or more instances, exist by virtue of ex- 
ample," and they are answered by showing " that in a majority of 
instances, and those of more frequent occurrence, the case is 
otherwise. If, however, it be the case more frequently, and in 
the majority of instances, we must contend that the present is not 
the case in point, or that its application is not in point, or that 
it has some difference at all events." Aris. Khet. Book II. 
ch. xxv. 

By this rule, Benedict answers the argument from example 
adduced by Beatrice, that is, by showing that " the present is not 
the case in point : " — 

" Bene. Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably. 

Beat. It appears not in this confession : there 's not one wise man among 
twenty that will praise himself. 

Bene. An old, an old instance, Beatrice, that liv'd in the time of good neigh- 
bours : [i. e. when the world, not being envious, would give merit its due 
meed of praise, and not force it to praise itself :J if a man do not erect in 
this age his own tomb ere he dies, he shall live no longer in monuments, than 
the bell rings and the widow weeps. 

Beat. And how long is that, think you ? 

Bene. Question f Why, an hour in clamour and a quarter in rheum : There- 
fore, it is most expedient for the wise (if Don Worm, his conscience, find no 
impediment to the contrary) to be the trumpet of his own virtues, as I am to my- 
self So much for praising myself" Act V. Sc. 2. 

Of arguments and inferences drawn from probabilities, the play 
is replete, it being cast in the very region of probable opinion. 
Instances need not be given, as passages containing them will be 
cited for other purposes. 

All the principal personages of the piece, moreover, have their 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 481 

plans, which they carry out by working upon the minds of others 
by discourse and proofs or other means of persuasion ; and to do 
this is to practice the art of rhetoric. 

The plan of the Prince to obtain Hero in marriage for Claudio, 
by wooing her in his name, and taking 

" Her hearing prisoner with the force 
And strong encounter of his amorous tale," 

has been adverted to; as has also that for effecting a match 
between Benedict and Beatrice by means of proofs that persuade 
them of each other's affection. 

Beatrice, also, has her plan ; it is one for obtaining revenge for 
the insult offered Hero and her friends. No sooner has Benedict 
avowed his love than she seizes the opportunity of insisting upon 
his proving his sincerity by " killing Claudio." The vehemency of 
her assertions which she substitutes for proofs, as well as her 
taunts upon his unreadiness to prove his love by acts, force upon 
Benedict the opinion that Claudio has been guilty of an unpardon- 
able outrage, and under this impression he consents to seek his 
life. 

" Beat. You dare easier be friends with me, than fight with mine enemy. 

Bene. Is Claudio thine enemy ? " 

And so on to the end of the scene (Act IV. Sc. 1). The passage 
is a clear case of the influence of discourse ; it is an example of 
persuasion, through the importunity of passion, and falls legiti- 
mately within the province of rhetoric. 

Essentially rhetorical also is Leonato's plan for vindicating the 
fair name of Hero, and disabusing the public mind of Messina of 
the opinions formed against her. He says to the Prince and 
Claudio : — 

" You cannot bid my daughter live again, 
That were impossible ; but I pray you both, 
Possess the people in Messina here 
How innocent she died ; and, if your love 
Can labour, aught in sad invention^ 
Hang her an epitaph upon her tomb, 
And sing it to her bones : sing it to-night." 

This expiatory offering they make ; they recite an ode and sing 
a dirge at Hero's tomb, but with so perfunctory a manner that it 
seems but empty ceremony, mere rhetoric, yet is on that account 
in strict unison with the conventional tone of the piece. 
31 



482 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 

The Friar also has his plan of bringing about a change in the 
mind of Claudio. Having watched the workings of nature in 
Hero, having marked 

" A thousand blushing apparitions start 
Into her face ; a thousand innocent shames 
In angel whiteness bear away those blushes," 

he sees in them proofs of the innocence of her soul. He is one 
who builds his opinion upon study and observation. He says : — 

" Trust not my age, 
Trust n ot'my ^reading nor my observations? 
Which with experimental seal do warrant 
The tenour of my book. . . . 
If this sweet lady lie not guiltless here 
Under some biting error." 

Act IV. Sc. 1. 

Thus he is a true Baconian, and adopts no dogma nor conclu- 
sion until he has put it to the test of experiment or direct obser- 
vation. He is well aware of the influence of feeling over opinion, 
and that the imagination enhances the value of what we have lost 
by investing it with a beauty it did not own whilst in possession ; 
and he proposes to Leonato to use this priuciple to work upon the 
mind of Claudio by reporting Hero as having died under his 
accusation. He makes this argument : — 

" She dying, as it must be so maintain'd 
Upon the instant that she was accus'd, 
Shall be lamented, pitied, and excus'd, 
Of every hearer ; For it so falls out, 
That what we have we prize not to the worth 
Whiles we enjoy it ; but being lack'd and lost, 
Why, then we rack the value, then we find 
The virtue that possession would not show us 
Whiles it was ours : So will it fare with Claudio : 
When he shall hear she died upon his words, 
The idea of her life shall sweetly creep 
Into his study of imagination y 
And every lovely organ of her life 
Shall come apparelVd in more precious habit, 
More moving-delicate and full of life 
Into the eye and prospect of his soul 
Than when she liv'd indeed : — then shall he mourn 
And wish he had not so accus'd her ; 
No, though he thought his accusation true. 






MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 483 

Let this be ho, and doubt not but success 
Will fashion the event in better shape 
Than I can lay it down in likelihood" etc. 

Act, IV. So. 1. 

This is clearly an argument based on probabilities, and is, more- 
over, a beautiful description of the deviation from truth which 
takes place in our mental patterns of things under the influence 

of feeling and imagination, thus leading to error, and converting 

ideas into idola. 

u Numberless, in short," says Bacon, speaking of idols, " arc 
the ways, and sometimes imperceptible, in which the affections 
colour and infect the understanding/' Nov. Org. Book I. A ph. 
49. 

In the ordinary exchange of opinions, almost all reasoning- 
rests on probabilities, while the wish to excel in argument origi- 
nates dialectic or the art of conversational disputation, which, as 
a special province of Rhetoric, is included under the transmission 
of knowledge* 

The dialogue of the play consists of opinions and objections 
stated by way of question and answer, and also of skirmishes of 
wit that owe all their effect to the argumentation, which, whether 
in jest or earnest, they carry forward. There are passages, also, 
that may be taken as direct examples of the rides laid down for 
dialectical reasoning, which, according to Aristotle, looks to four- 
sources for the Construction of syllogisms: — 

1. Probable propositions that may be assumed in an argument. 

2. Distinction of the equivocal ; or of words that are nearly of 
the same signification. 

3. Discovery of differences; or distinction of things which 
might be mistaken for one and the Same. 

4. Similitudes. 

Of the first of these, or of an argument made by tin; assump- 
tion of a proposition, the following is an example, in which ;i 

proverb or old saying is assumed as a premise.: — 
u Leon. By my troth, nieeej thou will never get thee <> husband if thou l»< 

shrewd of* thy tongU6< 

Ant. In faith, she 'l tOO curst. 

Beat* Too curst, is more khan curst : I shall lessen God'i lending thai n 

for U is said, ' Ood sends a curst coui short horns,' hut, f«> ;i cow tOO CUI 

none. 

Leon* So by being too curst God will tend you no horns. 
Beat* Just, if he tend mo no buiband«" 



484 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 

The second source of probable syllogisms is in the distinction 
of the equivocal ; this covers the ground of " multifarious predi- 
cation," or the use of ambiguous terms in reasoning. The uncer- 
tainty and ambiguity of words are put down by Bacon as among 
the most pernicious causes of error that darken the human under- 
standing. He calls them the "Idols of the Market Place," be- 
cause they grow out of the intercourse and conversation of men. 
And the dramatist had evidently given great attention to the same 
subject, as there is scarce one among his plays in which words, 
their uses, abuses, natures, and qualities do not receive some spe- 
cial exemplification. In this play, they are regarded with refer- 
ence to their ambiguity as predicates^ offering the disputant a 
choice of meanings as may best suit his purpose. 

Take the following, in which Beatrice " trans-shapes " Don Pe- 
dro's " predicates " in favor of Benedict into terms of disparage- 
ment : — 

" D. Pedro. I '11 tell thee how Beatrice praised thy wit the other day : I said, 
thou hadst a fine wit ; ' True,' says she, ' a fine little one ; ' ' No,' said I, ' a 
great wit ; ' ' Right,' says she, ' a great gross one ; ' ' Nay,' said I, ' a good wit ; ' 
' Just,' said she, 'it hurts nobody ;' 'Nay,' said I, 'the gentleman is wise ;' 
' Certain,' said she, ' a wise gentleman ; ' ' Nay,' said I, ' he hath the tongues ; p 
' That I believe,' said she, ' for he swore a thing to me on Monday night which 
he forswore on Tuesday morning ; there 's a double tongue ; there 's two 
tongues.' Thus did she, an hour together, trans-shape thy particular virtues," 
etc. 

The piece largely exemplifies this source of error, and makes 
direct mention of it as causing intentional error through force of 
wit, as thus : — 

" Beat. Let me go with that I came for, which is with knowing what hath 
passed between you and Claudio. 

Bene. Only foul words, and thereupon I will kiss thee. 

Beat. Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and 
foul breath is noisome ; therefore I will depart unkissed. 

Bene. Thou hast frighted the word out of its right sense, so forcible is thy wit." 

Beatrice avails herself of an ambiguity even in the sound of 
words. 

'• Messenger. And a good soldier, too, lady. 

Beat. And a good soldier to a lady ! But what is he to a lord ? " etc. 

The third source is " the discovery of differences, or distinction 
of things which might be mistaken for one and the same." 

By making a distinction between things to all appearance the 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 485 

same — the blush of guilt and the blush of modesty — Claudio 
derives an argument to justify his intolerable wrong towards 
Hero. 

" Claud. She 's but the sign and semblance of her honour. 
Behold, how like a maid she blushes here : 
0, what authority and show of truth 
Can cunning sin cover itself withal ! 
Comes not that blood as modest evidence 
To witness simple virtue ? Would you not swear, 
All you that see her, that she were a maid 
By these exterior shows ? But she is none : 
Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty." 

Under the fourth head, " similitude," falls the consideration of 
the similar and comparative excellence of such things as offer re- 
semblances, and also the topic that that which is nearer in resem- 
blance to the best is better than that which is less so ; as Ajax 
is better than Ulysses, because Ajax resembled Achilles, while 
Ulysses resembled only Nestor ; but there may be an objection to 
this, for mind is superior to body, and if Ajax resembled Achilles 
only in body, while Ulysses resembled Nestor in wisdom, it would 
reverse their comparative excellence. Vide Aris. Topics, Book 
III. ch. ii. 

This topic gives to Claudio a form of argument wherewith to 
prove Benedict's folly in challenging him. 

" Don Pedro. He is in earnest. 

Claudio. In most profound earnest, and I '11 warrant you for the love of 
Beatrice. 

D. Pedro. And has challenged thee ? 

Claud. Most sincerely. 

D. Pedro. What a pretty thing a man is, when he goes in his doublet and 
hose and leaves off his wit I 

Claud. He is then a giant to an ape, but then an ape is a doctor to such a man." 

Observe, also, that here the reason (or wit}, as " the specific 
difference," is directly taken as the true measure of the man. 

Another branch of the Art of Transmission is the Method of 
Transmission, of which Bacon enumerates several different kinds ; 
the leading one of which (termed by him the Magistral, because 
it teaches authoritatively, without stopping to prove) naturally ac- 
companies the usual and popular way of gathering knowledge ; for 
just in the same way that men are impatient of details and in- 
quiry, and consequently jump to conclusions, so in imparting and 



486 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 

receiving knowledge are they impatient of particulars, and hasten 
to sum up and condense the substance of what they have to say 
into some pithy statement, or, to use Bacon's own language, " as 
knowledges have hitherto been delivered, thei;e is a kind of con- 
tract of error between the deliverer and receiver, for he who de- 
livers knowledge desires to deliver it in such form as may be best 
believed, and not as may be most conveniently examined, and he 
who receives knowledge desires present satisfaction without wait- 
ing for due enquiry, and so rather not to doubt than not to err " 
(De Aug. Book VI. ch. ii.) ; that is, this method seeks to give 
the results of inquiry in such brief and condensed form as may 
be most easily received and readily assented to. 

Men, then, being fond of short methods, the play-writer, in 
this representation of a world of " discourse," endows his charac- 
ters with this favorite method of delivery as a mental habit ; for 
'instance, the Prince, alluding to the invitation of Leonato to him- 
self and suite, says : — 

" This is the sum of all ; Leonato — Signior Claudio and Signior Benedict 
— my dear friend Leonato hath invited you all," etc. 

Benedict, arguing the question of marriage, says : — 

" Because, I will not do them [women] the wrong to mistrust any, I will do 
myself the right to trust none, and the fine is (for the which I may go the 
finer), I will live a bachelor." 

In the following lines prolixity is censured : — 

" D. Pedro. Thou wilt be like a lover presently, 
And tire the hearer with a hook of words. 



Claud. How sweetly do you minister to love 

That know love's grief by his complexion ! 

But lest my liking might too sudden seem 

I would have salv'd it with a longer treatise, 

D. Pedro. What need the bridge much broader than the flood ? 

Look, what will serve, is fit : H is once, thou lov'st ; 

And I will fit thee with the remedy," etc. 

Ursula, at the masked ball, recognizes Antonio. 

" Come, come ; do you think I do not know you by your excellent wit ? Can 
virtue hide itself f Go to, mum, you are he : Graces will appear, and there 's an 
end: 1 

Don John, conferring with Borachio, — 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 487 

" How canst thou cross this marriage ? 

Borachio. Not honestly, nay lord, but so covertly that no dishonesty shall 
appear in me. 

D. John. Show me briefly how." 

Benedict comments on Balthazar's singing, — 

" Now is his soul ravished ! Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale 
souls out of men's bodies ? Well, a horn for my money, when all 's done." 

Don John, making his charge against Hero, — 

"I came hither to tell you, and circumstances shortened (for she hath been 
too long a talking of), the lady is disloyal." 

Borachio confesses, — 

" The lady is dead upon mine and my master's false accusation ; and, briefly, 
I desire nothing but the reward of a villain." 

. Leonato hastens the wedding ceremony, — 

" Come, friar Francis, only to the plain form of marriage, and you shall re- 
count the particular duties afterwards." 

Benedict recants his opinions respecting matrimony, — 

" In brief, since I do purpose to marry, I will think nothing to any purpose 
that the world can say against it ; and therefore never flout at me for what I 
have said against it ; for man is a giddy thing and this is my conclusion" 

There are other instances, but we will close the list with that of 
the boy, whom Benedict sends for a book, — 

" Bene. In my chamber-window lies a book : bring it hither to me in the 
orchard," — 

to which the boy, in his zeal, replies : " I am here already, sir," 
— of course, meaning that he will go and return so quickly that 
his absence will not be noted. Benedict rejoins : " I know that, 
but I would have thee hence and here again." 

The boy manifests the same haste that characterizes the more 
important personages of the piece. 

Opposed to these characters, so impatient of all prolixity, is 
Dogberry, who never comes to the point, and who, upon being 
charged by Leonato with being " tedious," declares that if he were 
as " tedious as a king, he could find it in his heart to bestow it all 
upon his worship." 

The remaining division of The Art of Transmission, i. e., the 
Organ of Discourse, is "also called Grammar," and "has two 



488 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING-. 

parts, one relating to speech, the other to writing, or words and 
letters." De Aug. Book VI. eh. 1. 

Of course, in a play like JIuch Ado. which effervesces with 
wit. there cannot he many marked specimens of grammatical 
technicalities, but some allusion to such topics may. nevertheless, 
be found : for instance, this of Benedict : — 

H How now ! Interjections ! Why. some be of laughter, as ha. ha, he ! " 

Or in the following : — 

•• Beat. By my troth. I am exceedingly ill ; hey, ho ! 
Marg. For a liawk, a horse, or a husband ? 
Beat. For the letter which begins them all, H.' ? 

The following, also, has a grammatical flavor : — 

" Beat. For which of my good parts did you first suffer love for me ? 
Be I do suffer love." etc. 

" To Grammar." says Bacon. "I refer, also, accidents of words, 
such as sound, measure, accent. The measure of words has pro- 
duced a vast body of Art. namely. Poesy, considered with refer- 
ence ... to the style and form of words, that is to say, metre 
and verse." De Aug. Book VI. ch. 1. 

In the next passage there is some commenting on the same 
subject. It is Benedict that speaks : — 

•• And a whole bookful of these quondam carpet-mongers, whose names yet 
run smoothly in the even road of a blank verse, why. they were never so 
truly turned over and over, as my poor self, in love. Marry. I cannot shew it 
in rhyme : I Moot tried; I can find no rhyme to lady but baby, an innocent 
rhyme : : . a hard rhyme : for sc : a babbling rhyme, very 

ominous endings ; — no, I was not born under a rhyming planet, for I cannot 
woo in festival terms." 

These passages are not strictly illustrative : they are allusive 
only, yet they unquestionably indicate that the subject of gram- 
mar was associated in the mind of the play-writer with that phi- 
losophy of u discourse " or the Ait of Transmission that finds so 
much exemplification in the piece : and considering that the play 
was written some years before Bacon published anything about 
his Art of Transmission, the similitude offered by the play with 
the Baconian doctrine in a division of the subject so undramatic 
as M Grammar." argues a most subtle and surprising concurrence 
of views between the play-writer and philosopher. 

The diction and phraseology of a Shakespearian play is the 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 489 

ultimate development and growth, so to speak, of the idea, which, 
with its ramifying conceptions, constitute the main trunk and 
branches of the composition. In Much Ado this idea is, as has 
been shown, that of a " discourse," or the deduction of a conclu- 
sion from proof, the aim of which is to form opinions and direct 
conduct. In the dramatic world men and women are the only 
subjects of judgment, and in ordinary discourse the standard of 
judgment is popular opinion or the Fashion, which is satisfied 
with the most superficial appearances and the vaguest rumors as 
evidence ; whereas a judgment truly formed rests on the reason, 
so instructed by the strictest proofs that the mental image ob- 
tained is an exact match or double of the reality. This difference 
between Opinion and Truth is illustrated in the play by the dif- 
ferent estimates of men and women formed upon such proofs as 
are afforded by the dissimulations of fashionable life and false 
appearances generally, on the one hand, and that accurate know- 
ledge, on the other, that is derived from genuine speech and be- 
havior, proceeding from simplicity and nature. It may, there- 
fore, be expected (if this analysis is correct) that the vocabulary 
of the play will contain classes of words that may be grouped 
under the respective heads of, among others, Discourse, Fashion, 
Form, which last will comprise match and measure, as being the 
reason or form of man, that is, the standard of judgment, and 
representing truth, on which account it is also the moral back- 
ground of the piece, for a Shakespearian play is always a picture 
of error on a ground of truth. 

Fashion is also the measure, the mode, from the Latin modus, 
that is, that by which anything is measured, its size, quantity, 
length, breadth, etc., particularly the due and proper measure. 
Cicero tells us " suus cuique modus est," and Beatrice tells us 
the same, " There is measure in everything." If we take the 
opening scene (a portion of which has been quoted before for 
another purpose) we shall see how freely this notion of measure is 
introduced, and at the same time mark with what ease the dia- 
logue is made to hold in solution, as it were, the dominant con- 
ceptions of the piece. 

" Leonato. I learn in this letter that Don Pedro of Arragon comes this night 
to Messina. 

[We have here the transmission of knowledge and intelligence. 
Reports and hearsay are the motive powers of the piece.] 



490 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 

Messenger. He is very near by this ; he was not three leagues off when I left 
him. 

Leon. How many gentlemen have you lost in this action ? 

Mess. But few of any sort, and none of name. 

Leon. A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full numbers. 

[In these sentences, measure and number are the very subject 
of discourse.] 

Leon. I find here that Don Pedro hath bestowed much honour on a young 
Florentine called Claudio. 

Mess. Much deserved on his part and equally remembered by Don Pedro. 
[A phrase implying a match.] He hath borue himself beyond the promise of 
his age ; doing in the figure of a lamb the feats of a lion ; he hath, indeed, better 
bettered expectation than you must expect of me to tell you how. 

[Still the phraseology is governed by the notion of quantity 
and measure; at the same time the deceptiveness of appearances 
is introduced in the antithesis used to describe Claudio's valor. 
Under the outward " figure of a lamb " he conceals the inward 
" form " or essential nature of a lion. Note, too, the jiugle of 
words in the Messenger's last speech, a premonitory symptom 
that ambiguity of words will hold a conspicuous place in the 
play.] 

Leon. He hath an uncle here in Messina will be very much glad of it. 

Mess. I have already delivered him letters, and there appears much joy in 
him ; even so much that joy could not shew itself modest enough, without a badge 
of bitterness. 

Leon. Did he break into tears ? 

Mess. In great measure. 

[Here is another phrase implying both match and measure, and 
in addition we find reversed the ordinary course of metaphor, 
which is from the intellectual to the material, and from the con- 
ventional to the natural world. A purely natural emotion, weep- 
ing for joy, is described by a metaphor drawn from a rule of 
good manners, " Could not shew itself modest enough ; " and also 
from an allusion to costume, " Without a badge of bitterness." 
This is analogous to that substitution of Art for Nature, occa- 
sioned by highly artificial manners.] 

Leon. A kind overflow of kindness [the rule of manners according to the 
reason through which men are of one kind] ; there are no faces truer than 
those that are so washed [an allusion to cosmetics and false appearances]. 
How much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping." 

In this last antithet, the moral of the play is put before us. 
How much better is sympathy than ridicule, truth than fashion ! 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 491 

Many of the words signifying measure are so familiar that even 
the constant repetition of them escapes attention : among them 
are many, much, few, little, great, every, any, all, which last is 
often introduced. Terms of arithmetical measure, also, are often 
used. 

In Act II. Sc. 1, Beatrice gives us her idea of a husband by 
telling what would exceed and what fall short of the measure. 

" Leon. Was not Count John here at supper ? 

Ant. I saw him not. 

Beat. How tartly that gentleman looks ! I never see him but I am heart- 
burned an hour after. 

Hero. He is of very melancholy disposition. 

Beat. He were an excellent man that were made just midway between him and 
Benedict : the one is too like an image and says nothing ; and the other too like 
my lady's eldest son, evermore tattling. 

Leon. Then half Signior Benedict's tongue in Count John's mouth and half 
Count John's melancholy in Signior Benedict's face — 

Beat. With a good leg and good foot, uncle, with money enough in his 
purse, such a man would win any woman in the world — if he could get her 
good-will. 

Beat. I could not endure a husband with a beard upon his face ; I had 
rather lie in the woollen. 

Leon. You may light upon a husband that hath no beard. 

Beat. What should I do with him ? dress him in my apparel and make 
him my waiting gentlewoman ? He that hath a beard is more than a youth, 
and he that hath no beard is less than a man, and he that is more than a youth 
is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him : Therefore I 
will even take sixpence in earnest of the bear-ward and lead his apes into 
hell." 

The notion of a match appears in many phrases, of which the 
following in italics will suffice for examples : — 

" Beat. Against my will, I am sent to bid you come in to dinner. 

Bene. Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains. 

Beat. I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank 
me ; if it had been painful I would not have come. 

Bene. You take pleasure then in the message ? 

Beat. Yea, just as much as you may take upon a knife's point and choke a 
daw withal : You have no stomach, signior ; fare you well. [ Exit, 

Bene. Ha ! * Against my will, I am sent to bid you come in to dinner ; ' 
— there 's a double meaning in that. ' I took no more pains for those thanks 
than you take pains to thank me ; ' that f s as much as to say, Any pains I take 
for you is as easy as thanks." 

" His words are a very fantastical banquet — just so many strange dishes." 



492 MUCH ADO ABOUT XOTHIXG. 






" Can you smell him out by that ? that 9 s as -much as to say, the sweet youth *s 
in love.*' 

A match is that which answers, Jits, suits, being neither too 
much nor too little, but just, even, such and so, like. 

In Leonato's speech (Act V. Sc. 1) the notion of measure and 
match is strongly put. 

" Let no comforter delight mine ear 
But such a one whose wrongs do suit with 'mine. 
Measure his woe the length and breadth of mine 
And let it answer every strain for strain : 
As thus for thus and such a grief for such, 
In every lineament, branch, shape and form 
If such a one will smile," etc. 

This notion of a match, lying at the bottom of the piece as it 
does, — for truth of knowledge is a double or match of what is, 
and the " form " ist he match in the mind of the external object, 
— decides also (and the fact may be taken as a proof of the amaz- 
ing ingenuity and painstaking with which this artist caused all 
parts of his play to contribute to the harmony and unity of its 
effect) to a great extent the forms of the scenes, there being sev- 
eral marked instances of prominent scenes which are doubles or 
counterparts of one another. 

Thus, Act I. So. 2, in which Antonio communicates to Leonato 
the Prince's intention of wooing Hero, is immediately followed 
by Scene 3, Act L, in which Borachio communicates the same 
news to Don John. 

The scene (Act III. Sc. 1) in which Beatrice is entrapped into 
love for Benedict is but a counterpart of that (Act II. Sc. 3) in 
which Benedict is entrapped into love for Beatrice : and both are 
followed by soliloquies of the same tenor. In Act V. Sc. 1, 
Antonio vainly attempts to stop the flow of Leonato's grief, and 
immediately after their positions are reversed and Leonato with 
equal futility endeavors to moderate the passion of Antonio. 

The play closes with a series of passages that are counterparts 
or doubles. 

" Bene. Do not you love me ? 

Beat. Why, no ; no more than reason. 

Bene. Why, then, your uncle and the Prince and Claudio 

Have been deceiv'd ; they swore you did. 

Beat. Do not you love me ? 

Bene. Troth, no ; no more than reason. 

Beat Why, then, my cousin Margaret and Ursula 

Have been deceiv'd, for they did swear you did. 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 493 

Bene. They swore you were almost sick for me. \ 
Beat. They swore you were well-nigh dead for me. ) 
Bene. 'T is no matter. Then you do not love me ? 
Beat. No, truly, but in friendly recompense. 
Leon. Come, cousin, I am sure you love the gentleman. > 
Claud. And I '11 be sworn upon % that he loves her ; ) 
For here 's a paper written in his hand, 
A halting sonnet of his own pure brain, 
Fashion'd to Beatrice. 

Hero. And here 's another, 

Writ in my cousin's hand, stolen from her pocket, 
Containing her affection unto Benedict. 
Bene. A miracle ! here 's our hands against our hearts ! Come, I '11 have ^ 

thee ; but, by this light, I take thee for pity. I 

Beat. I would not deny you, but by this good day, I yield upon great f 

persuasion. J 

Bene. For thy part, Claudxo, I did think to have beaten thee ; but in that " 
thou art like to be my kinsman, live unbruised and love my cousin. 

Claud. I had well hop'd thou wouldst have denied Beatrice, that I might 
have cudgelled thee out of thy single life, to make thee a double-dealer : 
which, out of question, thou wilt be, if my cousin do not look exceedingly 
narrow to thee." 

Words that are affined in signification with Discourse and 
Proof are too obvious to need enumeration. Such phrases as 
" Will you not eat your words ? " and " You shake your head at 
that," belong to this class, as expressive of affirmation or denial. 
It may be noted that the idea of a play almost always strongly 
colors the diction of those minor passages which are thrown in as 
connecting links in the action of the piece, as in the following 
lines : — 

" Friar. Did I not tell you she was innocent ? 
Leon. So are the Prince and Claudio, who accus'd her 
Upon the error that you heard debated. 
But Margaret was in some fault for this, 
Although against her will, as it appears 
In the true course of all the question." 

The diction contains an unusual number of words from French 
roots, or from the Latin through the French. In addition there 
are some words introduced wearing English forms with French 
significations, as "proposing" and "propose" from the French 
propos, i. e. discourse, talk ; advertisement (avertissemmt) in 
the sense of admonition. Others, again, are Anglicized with but 



494 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 

little change of form, such as embassage, recheat, baldrich, 
poniard, guerdon, blazon, enfranchise, empoison, etc. Fashion 
itself is French. 

The prosaic or practical or even the jocular reader might ask, 
why does not Hero or her friends prove an alibi ? for Borachio 
himself says, " I will so fashion the matter that Hero shall be ab- 
sent." But such a measure on her part or on that of her friends, 
or any hesitation on the part of Leonato in accepting as true the 
grossly improbable story of the Prince and Claudio, would not only 
have marred the plot, but would have broken the uniform fashion 
that prevails among the characters of yielding a ready credence to 
whatever rumor or on-dit they hear without putting it to the 
slightest test or examination. They all alike are equally hasty at 
jumping to conclusions, equally negligent in asking for proof, — to 
such an extent indeed as to have drawn down on the dramatist 
from some quarters great ridicule for the improbability of the 
fable ; and it is therefore fair to suppose that the play-writer, 
whose art never failed him, had a purpose in thus uniformly pro- 
ducing this effect. But whatever his design, it has rendered the 
picture of life here presented a most apt and striking illustration 
of those hasty and premature conclusions w r hich characterized the 
old philosophies and which Bacon invented his method to put an 
end to. The dramatist, moreover, seems to rely upon the same 
loose and careless way of thinking on the part of his readers, for 
the acceptance of the events of his play as true, as that which he 
depicts as customary among the characters of the piece. And in- 
deed the proofs — of which the constant exhibition throughout the 
piece is in accordance also with the "form " ovidea of a discourse 
— are of the flimsiest and most superficial character, mere appear- 
ance and hearsay ; yet as they gain credence and support opinions, 
productive of most unhappy consequences, they cause the piece to 
offer an illustration of the following weighty aphorism of Bacon. 
" Vicious proofs are as the strongholds and defences of idola (false 
opinions) ; and those we have in logic do little else than make the 
world the bond-slave of human thought and human thought the 
bond-slave of words. P roofs truly are in effect the philosophies 
themselves and the sciences. For such as they are, well or ill 
established, such are the systems of philosophy and the contem- 
plations which follow. Now in the whole of the process which leads 
from the sense and objects to axioms and conclusions, the demon- 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 495 

strations which we use are deceptive and incompetent. ... In the 
first place, the impressions of the sense itself are faulty ; for the 
sense both fails us and deceives us [as in the case of the Prince 
and Claudio when witnessing the interview between Margaret 
and Borachio]. Secondly, notions are ill-drawn from the impres- 
sions of the senses, and are indefinite and confused, whereas they 
should be definite and distinctly bounded [which receives ample 
illustration in the many instances of ambiguity of words made 
conspicuous in the play]. . . . Lastly, that method of discovery 
and proof, according to which the most general principles are first 
established and then intermediate axioms are tried and proved by 
them, is the parent of error and the curse of all science," — which 
is tantamount to reasoning upon imperfect premises, a method 
habitual with the personages of this piece. 

What Bacon asserts of philosophy and the sciences is true of 
all knowledge however common and familiar ; it is valid or worth- 
less according to the nature of the proofs it rests on. It is the 
fashion of the world to form opinions upon vague reports and de- 
lusive appearances; and although such opinions have no weight, 
yet the bulk of the so-called knowledge on which the world rests 
its beliefs is made up of such opinions ; and this is the special 
aspect of the world depicted in Much Ado about Nothing. 



THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR 

This play is a jest throughout ; the little of serious there is in 
it serving only as a background to relieve its comic elements. Of 
its merits as a dramatic work, Dr. Johnson thus speaks : — 

"The conduct of this drama is deficient : the action begins and 
ends often before its conclusion, and the different parts might 
change places without inconvenience ; but its general power, that 
power by which all works of genius shall, finally, be tried, is such 
that perhaps it never yet had reader or spectator, who did not 
think it too soon at an end." 

These observations are true ; but it is equally true that these 
imputed faults and imperfections (which do not at all interfere 
with the effect of the piece) may result from the poet's method, 
the first rule of which (so far as his own drama is concerned) is 
that a tragedy or comedy must be the development of a " literary 
form," or of that idea that underlies some distinct and special 
class of writings : and in this piece we find that the management 
of time and place is the same as that of a story, in which, on 
account of its amusing incidents, we overlook the want of a strict 
causal connection of events, nor ask for any explanation of the 
how or the why this or that incident came about, but accept it all 
as true and natural for the sake of the amusement it affords. 
The Merry Wives is a succession of scenes, some of which 
stand independent of the others, and refer to disconnected events 
(one scene being entirely isolated), yet all furnishing matter for 
laughter, and these, being somewhat loosely stitched together, 
form a series of jests, culminating at last in one that unites all the 
actions and the agents of the play in one great farcical result. 
This points to the "form," which apparently is that of "a book 
of jests/' or say, a jest, which generally is defined as words with- 
out serious meaning, and having no reason nor cause in the truth 
of things, but intended only for laughter. Unreality and false 
pretense are characteristic of jests, particularly of practical ones, 
which are made up of tricks and deceptions that befool and make 



THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 497 

laughing-stocks of their victims. They are, of necessity, in con- 
trast with the sincere, the earnest, the important, in one word, the 
rational; and rely for their effects upon the perversion of lan- 
guage in some mode ; either, as in purely verbal jests, by simply 
playing upon words, as in puns and other intentional misuse of 
speech ; or by misconstructions that give rise to unexpected turns 
of words ; or by feigning facts and telling downright lies in order 
to mislead or betray their butts into actions or situations that 
expose them to ridicule ; wherefore, the " form " of a jest may be 
stated as the misuse of speech, or the use of words without serious 
meaning or ground in truth or reality, but designed only for 
exciting mirth or rendering some person or thing ridiculous. 

In the same category with jests may be placed blunders and 
improprieties of speech and manners ; these excite mirth and 
often irrepressible laughter, so strong is the instinct to laugh at 
whatever is out of place or disproportionate, or said or done with- 
out cause or reason. Ungrounded suspicions come under the 
same head ; they are simply unreasonable, and lead to actions for 
which there is no cause, and therefore provoke derision; as Master 
Ford says of his own jealousy : " If I suspect without cause, why 
then make sport at me ; then let me be your jest, I deserve it." 

Of deceptions practiced in order to bring about some ridiculous 
end, examples abound in comic stories and " merry tales," which 
turn upon the stratagems of the characters to outwit one another ; 
such, for instance, as the devices of youthful lovers to cheat and 
deceive morose and ill-natured guardians or old and jealous hus- 
bands, or other supposedly unreasonable people, who are always 
deemed superfluous and in the way ; and without being over-nice 
in their morality, or strictly observant of probability, — in truth, 
often grossly and palpably violating it, — they are accepted as 
true enough representations of life for the sake of their humorous 
vein and laughable catastrophes. They were jests and so looked 
upon, — not to be taken seriously, but designed for sport. Of 
this class is Tarleton's " News out of Purgatory," containing the 
adventures of " The Two Lovers of Pisa," on which this comedy 
is partly founded. 

A play evolved from the idea of a jest, or words without seri- 
ous. meaning, — as is the Merry Wives, etc., — will naturally pre- 
sent a side of life with superficial characters and unimportant 
details, such as may frequently be found among the well-to-do 
32 



, 



498 THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 

people of a country town, whose aims of life seldom rise higher than 
the procurement of comfort and the pleasures of the sense, and 
in whose domestic and social intercourse manners are familiar, 
and practical jokes not uncommon. In this world of petty 
interests, however, there is the same regard for social standing as 
elsewhere, and the predominant sentiment — as if in mockery of 
greater ambitions — is a love of personal consequence or sense of 
importance : and the question most frequently to be decided is 
whether a man is of import or importance, or is he only one who 
is without serious meaning, making life a jest through trivial 
aims, ridiculous manners, and want of appreciation of the earnest 
side of human nature. 

The scene is laid at Windsor, a town which has a royal castle 
and court end. of which, however, we see nothing, but such men- 
tion is from time to time made of it as has the effect of impress- 
ing us the more forcibly with the condition and manners of that 
society into which the action of the piece takes us. This is the 
class of substantial commoners, some of whom having amassed 
riches are able to live without labor, and so " by the usage 
of England are entitled to be called masters, and be taken for 
gentlemen." These people, as represented in this play, have a 
tone of good-will and readiness to render neighborly offices, and 
though they live almost exclusively for the good things of this 
world, they cherish jDride of character and value truth and 
honesty : their plane of morality, however, is neither very high 
nor very low, while their religious faith, which lies imbedded in 
their minds like a moral fossil, is of the most orthodox pattern, 
having for its main article a belief that hell with eternal penal- 
ties awaits in a world hereafter all slips and transgressions of 
theirs in this life. 

To this class belong George Page and Frank Ford, who are 
* % masters and gentlemen," intelligent and kind-hearted, promi- 
nent in the circle in which they move, frank in manners, but with- 
out pretensions to high birth or elegant accomplishment. They 
are wealthy, are fond of sports and good cheer, keeping hawks 
and hounds, and exercising a liberal and hearty hospitality. They 
are of about the same calibre mentally, but morally Page is the 
higher character, as he has more essential dignity, and is free 
from extremes of opinion, while Ford is of a jealous temper, that 
distorts both his judgment and feelings. 






THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 499 



Their wives are fit helpmates for such men, being hearty, buxom 
dames, of not much dignity nor refinement, in fact, somewhat 
coarse in the texture of their minds and speech, but witty, fond of 
a laugh, and, while honest in purpose, ready for a joke though it 
be pushed to the extreme limits of decorum. The epithet " merry" 
given them in the title of the play, in some measure marks their 
disposition. In a quatrain, which seems purposely introduced to 
give epigrammatically the moral of the piece, Mistress Page says : — 

" We '11 leave a proof by that which we will do, 
Wives may be merry and yet be honest too : 
We do not act that often jest and laugh : 
'T is old but true. < Still swine eat all the draff.' " 

It is not in a refined stratum of society that the rough jokes of 
which Falstaff is the victim could be perpetrated. 

Into this circle is introduced Sir John Falstaff, a knight and 
courtier, distinguished alike for the obesity of his person and the 
exuberance of his wit, but gross and sensual in his appetites and 
low and profligate in his aims. He sojourns as a guest at the 
Garter Inn, with his followers Nym, Bardolph, and Pistol, a set 
of thieving, " coney-catching rascals," who pick pockets and filch 
whatever they can lay hands on. Having heard that Ford and 
Page are rich, and that their wives hold the purse-strings, Fal- 
staff resolves to make love to the women in order to reach, by 
means of their favor, the pockets of the husbands. With this 
intent, — for which only the most egregious self-esteem could have 
induced him to hope for success, — he writes love-letters to both 
of the wives, and directs Nym and Pistol to carry them to their 
respective addresses ; but these unmitigated rogues see fit on a 
sudden to affect dignity and self-respect, and refuse the base office 
as derogatory, forsooth, to their honor as wearers of swords ; a 
point which Falstaff does not stop to discuss, but dispatches his 
page with the letters, and forthwith discharges his scrupulous fol- 
lowers. The wives receive the letters with surprise and scorn, to 
which they give vigorous expression, but, upon conferring to- 
gether, they are greatly amused at finding that both letters are 
couched in identically the same language, the names only being 
changed, and their sense of humor is also keenly touched by the 
infinite conceit of one like Falstaff, well-nigh worn to pieces with 
age, taking upon himself the part of a young gallant ; and they, 
therefore, resolve to hold out to him hopes in order to draw him 



^1 



/ 



500 THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 

on and betray him into some situation that will cover him with 
ridicule ; and, to this end, they send him word to visit Ford's 
house at a particular hour. In the mean time, the two discarded 
servants reveal to Page and Ford FalstafFs design. Page treats 
the story with contempt, but Ford, more jealous, thinks that per- 
chance there may be some ground for suspicion, and resolves to 
watch the course of things ; and in order that he may do so more 
effectually, he seeks, in the disguise of one " Master Brook," an 
interview with Falstaff, and, by gifts of money and a plausible 
reason assigned for his wishes, induces the knight to undertake 
the inexpressibly mean and ungentlemanly office of wooing Mis- 
tress Ford, and, after gaining her confidence, of betraying it to 
him, that he may use the knowledge to coerce her to listen to a 
pretended suit of his own. Falstaff acquaints " Master Brook " 
with the hour of appointment between himself and Mistress Ford, 
which enables the jealous husband to come in upon their inter- 
view ; but the ingenuity of the two women (for Mistress Page 
acts throughout in concert with her friend) secures FalstafFs 
escape from Ford's wrath, though only by means that expose him 
to the most laughable and ludicrous indignities. This occurs 
again and again, Falstaff being completely outwitted, and held up 
finally to public contempt and laughter. 

Other jests are practiced by the host of the Garter, which 
make laughing-stocks of Dr. Caius and Sir Hugh Evans by send- 
ing them each to a different part of the forest to meet the other 
in a duel ; and the play concludes with the double trick attempted 
to be played upon each other by Page and his wife in the mar- 
riage of their daughter, the one planning to marry her to Slender 
and the other counter-plotting to bestow her upon Dr. Caius, 
and both being duped and made ridiculous by Mistress Ann's 
taking the matter into her own hands, and running away with her 
lover, Fenton. 

A play founded on the idea of a jest must have for a back- 
ground the proper use of speech and the true rule of manners, 
which two are in some respects, identical. 

For jests, particularly practical ones, make free with persons, 
and are always, to some extent, breaches of decorum ; they, there- 
fore, raise the question of good manners. The true rule of man- 
ners seems to be comprised in reverence for others and reverence 
for one's self, or, as Bacon puts it, " the rule of manners may be 



THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 501 

'summed up in an exact balancing of our own dignity with that 
| of others." This rule, while enjoining a due maintenance of one's 
own rights, forbids any infraction of the rights of others in person, 
property, or feelings. It bounds our conduct by the limits of 
reason, or, in other words, it requires that our ends (Lat. fines) 
at which our actions aim should be defined and approved by a 
sound discretion. Rational ends are the proper limits of all ac- 
tion, and the test of rationality is simply the assignment of a valid 
cause for our conduct. This rule, which tests all folly and under- 
lies the action of the piece, is repeatedly brought forward with 
comic effect, — as in the instance of the Welsh parson, who, when 
waiting in the forest to fight with swords with Dr. Caius, and 
having for that purpose taken off his gown, is accosted by Shallow 
and Page (who pretend to be ignorant of the circumstances) as 
follows : — 

" Shallow. What ! the sword and the word ! Do you study them both, 
master parson ? 

Page. And youthful still, in your doublet and hose, this raw, rheumatic 
day?" 

The parson replies, by way of justifying his indiscretion, — 

" There \s reasons and causes for it" 

And Ford, in searching his house for Falstaff, is able to with- 
stand the jeers and ridicule of his friends for " suspecting with- 
out cause " by a firm, and in fact well-supported conviction, that 
the discovery of the knight will show that he has cause for his 
conduct, and that his suspicions are entirely within the bounds of 
reason. 

In awarding respect to others we must be governed by know- 
ledge of their worth ; and in this point the judgment is apt to 
err, and often with unpleasant effects, for of all the minor wrongs 
and rubs of life there are but few which excite more bitter re- 
sentment than the slight which men put upon one another, either 
through the assumption of too much importance in themselves or 
the disdain they show for the importance of others. For such 
offenses there is no redress except of a personal nature, or some 
retaliation or revenge in kind. Hence the danger of jesting, for 
jests necessarily invade self-consequence, and are intrusions, to say 
the least, upon personal dignity ; and on this account there is 
special need of discretion or that nice discernment that deter- 



/ 






502 THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. \ \ 

mines the exact bounds where mirth and good breeding end and '' 
offense begins. Still tricks and deceptions are held to be legiti-r 
mate when directed against inordinate vanity, self-importance, 
hypocrisy, and similar vices, and particularly when used to foil! 
knavery and fraud. 

" Hang him," exclaims Mistress Page, in allusion to the tricks » 
which she and Mistress Ford play upon Falstaff in revenge for J 
his insulting proposals ; " hang him, dishonest varlet ! we cannot I 
misuse him enough ! " 

Even in these cases there is a just period to be observed ; on the j 
other hand, there are subjects and persons of that worth that no 
attempt to ridicule them will for a moment be tolerated ; conse- 
quently the limit to which a jest may be carried — and the same 
holds good of all behavior towards others — must be determined 
by the intrinsic worth and importance of the person affected. 

And this importance, in turn, must be measured by the ends a 
person pursues, for ends being the objects of desire and the causes 
of action reveal the true import or importance of a man ; if his 
ends be connected with great issues and affect many persons and 
interests, his import or importance is equally great ; if, however, 
his ends are trivial and insignificant, he is rated accordingly. 

But to bound or limit a thing is to define it or make a defini- 
tion, which, verbally, is a statement of what a thing is. But this 
is the upshot of all philosophy, for, in Baconian language, it is 
to define " the true difference " or " form " of a thing ; and this, 
when applied to man and his various attributes, determines his 
worth and importance, or the want of them, and fixes the measure 
of respect due to him. 

We testif} 7 our respect to others by our mode of addressing 
them, and by the names and titles we bestow upon them. Terms 
of praise or abuse, and, indeed, all epithets drawn from the moral 
vocabulary of the language, are, like other descriptive names, 
liable, of course, to misapplication ; and as in manners there must 
be fitness between a man and his actions, and in speech between 
the word and the thought, so especially should there be fitness 
between the title or epithet and the character it is applied to ; 
therefore in bestowing titles and appellations, or in awarding 
respect and consideration to those who bear them, the judgment 
must be guided by an accurate knowledge of the man, and this> 
as we have seen, lies in definition. 



THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 503 

But to definition, the proper use of speech is indispensable, 
such use being to express precisely and truthfully the meanings of 
the mind ; and, on the other hand, the grossest abuse of speech 
is deceit, as in lying, prevarication, falsehoods ; in which class, 
also, must be placed (apart from any question of morality) jests 
or words without serious meaning or ground in truth and reality. 
A play, however, which takes " the form " of a jest for its con- 
structive principle must convert the world into words, but in the 
drama the world is imaged by men and women, and men and 
women may be considered as words by reason of their names and 
titles, on which latter to a great degree their social consequence is 
founded ; on this account the persons of this dramatic world are 
intent on making a definition of names and discovering what 
meaning or importance they carry ; to what extent are they sig- 
nificant or insignificant. 

As names of things, words derive their meaning from the con- 
ceptions they stand for, and these conceptions should correspond 
with the real nature of the things ; but such accuracy is seldom 
practicable ; the same word will often stand for different concep- 
tions in different minds, and be used with a different meaning. 

In like manner proper names or the names of individuals 
should derive their meaning from the character, that is, the mind 
and disposition of those they stand for ; it is this which gives 
them their real significance and confers on the bearer his true 
import or importance, inasmuch as such import pertains to his 
essential nature, whereas those names of persons which derive 
their significance only from outward or accidental circumstances 
may be said to be without real importance or serious meaning, 
and are mere trifles, no better than jests. 

This imperfection in the acceptation of words is a perpetual 
theme of complaint with Bacon, who, for this reason, discards the 
logic of the schools, which rests on the meaning of words, as the 
means of arriving at truth, and asserts that the only trustworthy 
proof in investigating nature lies in the evidence of the sense. 
Of the loose and ill-defined nature of words, he says : — 

" There are Idols (false appearances) formed by the intercourse 
and association of men with each other, which I will call Idols of 
the Market-Place on account of the commerce and consort of men 
there. For it is by discourse that men associate, and words are 
imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And the 



504 THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 

ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the under- 
standing." Nov. Org. Book I. Aph. 43. 

Idols of the Market-Place are the most troublesome of all ; . . . 
now words being commonly framed and applied according to the 
capacity of the vulgar follow those lines of division which are 
most obvious to the vulgar understanding ." Nov. Org. Book I. 
Aph. 59. 

" Idols imposed by words on the understanding are of two 
kinds. They are either names of things which do not exist, or 
the names of things which exist, but yet confused and ill-defined 
and hastily and irregidarly derived from realities" 

So also Bacon held that the distribution of things into genera 
and species, from which the names of things are derived, was 
merely for convenience' sake and taught us nothing of their real 
nature. He says, " the distribution of things into certain tribes, 
which are called categories and predicaments, are but cautions 
against the confusion of defective divisions." Adv. p. 275. 

The only remedy for these imperfections of words is a true 
definition. But definitions are of different kinds, and, as this 
difference goes to the very meaning of the piece, it must be 
briefly stated. 

Logicians divide definitions into nominal and real : nominal are 
those by which an unknown word is explained by one better 
known, as is done in dictionaries. With these the play has not 
much to do, yet does not wholly overlook them ; as, for instance, 
a burlesque imitation of a nominal definition is given in the joke 
by which the host of the Garter, taking advantage of the 
French doctor's ignorance of English, covertly laughs at him. 

" Host. A word, monsieur mock-water. 
Caius. Mock-vater ! vat is dat ? 

Host. Mock-water, in our English tongue, is valour, bully. 
Caius. By gar, then, I have as much mock-vater as the Englishman. 
Host. He will clapper-claw thee tightly, bully. 
Caius. Clapper-de-claw ! vat is dat ? 
Host. That is, he will make thee amends. 

Caius. By gar, me do look, he shall clapper-de-claw me ; for, by gar, me 
vill have it." Act II. Sc. 3. 

Real definition unfolds the nature of a thing, and is either 
essential or accidental. 

The essential defines a thing by its real nature, and to make 



THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 505 

such a definition is, as Whately says, " the end of all our 
study ; " it corresponds to what Bacon calls the discovery of the 
" form," which, however deeply hidden and difficult to discover 
in things, is given in man, as " the soul is the form ; " wherefore 
an essential definition of a man may be made by enumerating the 
properties of his mind and disposition, or his mental and moral 
attributes. These, as they admit of various degrees of develop- 
ment, are, though common to all men, in no two in the same 
measure ; yet, in the case of an individual, his character can be 
sufficiently unfolded to determine his import and the amount of 
consideration to which he is entitled. Ford instances this, when, 
flattering Falstaff, he defines him by his mental accomplishments, 
yet in a way that measures the consideration that is paid him. 

" Ford. Now, Sir John, here is the heart of my purpose : you are a gentle- 
man of excellent breeding, admirable discourse, of great admittance, authentic in 
your place and person, generally allowed for your many warlike, court-like, and 
learned preparations." Act II. Sc. 2. 

On the other hand, accidental definition (which, as Whately 
says, is commonly called a description^) enumerates the accidents 
that constitute individual peculiarities, such as personal appear- 
ance, gait, complexion, color of hair, and other like particulars, as 
in Simple's definition of Slender (it being premised that a defini- 
tion in a play assumes more or less the form of a dialogue, and is 
couched in the characteristic language and style of the speakers). 

" Quickly. Peter Simple, you say your name is ? 

Simp. Ay, for fault of a better. 

Quick. And master Slender 's your master ? 

Simp. Ay, forsooth. 

Quick. Doth he not wear a great round beard, like a glover's paring-knife ? 

Simp. No, forsooth ; he hath a little wee face, with a little yellow beard ; a 
Cain-coloured beard. 

Quick. A softly -sprighted man, is*he not ? 

Simp. Ay, forsooth ; but he is as tall a man of his hands as any is between this 
and his head ; he hath fought with a warrener. 

Quick. How say you ? oh, I should remember him ; docs he not hold up his 
head, as it were, and strut in his gait ? 

Simp. Yes, indeed, does he." Act I. Sc. 4. 

Or the definition may be drawn from condition in life, rank, 
estate, place of birth, possessions, and the like, as in the following 
definition of Shallow, who is complaining of the wrong done him 
by Falstaff : — 



i 



506 THE MERRY WIVES OE WINDSOR. 

"Shal. If be were twenty Sir John Falstaffs, he shall not abnse Robert 
Shallow, Esquire. 

Slen. In the county of Gloucester, justice of peace and coram. 

Shal. Ays cousin Slender, and custalorum. 9 

Sle?i. Ay. and ratolorum, too ; and a gentleman lorn, master parson ; who 
writes himself armigero : in any bill, warrant, quittance or obligation, armigero. 

Shal. Ay, that I do : and have done any time these three hundred years,'' etc. 

Act I. Sc. 1. 

Accidental definition throws no light upon the real nature of 
the individual; but as men attribute importance to that which 
they most love and wish for. the accidental definition, drawn from 
properties of person and estate, will for many minds often give an 
individual an importance much greater than any essential defini- 
tion, however favorable, could do. And in this respect of making 
a true definition it is that the comedy draws a line between the 
real and factitious. 

These accidental definitions, in which, perhaps, no two minds 
will agree, render the import of a proper name (or of a person 
considered as a word) analogous with those imperfect meanings of 
words which, being " imposed by the mind and capacity of the 
vulgar," are " ill defined and hastily abstracted from realities." so 
that they signify different senses to different minds, and this very 
naturally accounts for the variety of opinions that are frequently 
found about the same person. 

The prominent figure of the piece is Falstaff. There has been 
much conjecture whether the Falstaff of this comedy precedes or 
follows in time the fat knight of the same name, who fills so large 
a space in the two parts of Henry IV. ; and there has also been 
much speculation as to the period of Falstaffs life at which the 
events of the comedy took place ; is he. as here presented, the first 
conception of the character, which was afterwards expanded into 
one of the most famous creations iia all comic literature, or is he 
that character in eclipse and partial obscuration ? This is a ques- 
tion, however, which involves a comparison of two distinct plays, 
and can hardly be properly raised when the comedy is treated of 
as an independent work of dramatic art; in such case, the charac- 
ter must be taken as it stands in the piece, and under the relations 
there found : and it is obviously not permissible to go outside of 
the play for hints of its import ; otherwise, its artistic finish and 
its special meaning, as well as the special meaning of the comedy 
itself, will be perverted. 






THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 507 

The Sir John Falstaff of the Merry Wives, etc., is an expo- 
nent of the idea of the play ; for though he bears a title of dignity 
and worship (wor£A-ship), it is a word without serious meaning ; 
he is a knight without a single knightly quality. His rank and 
breeding give him a factitious social importance, but on grounds 
of character he is entitled to no respect whatever. At the very 
opening of the piece we hear of him as a trespasser and poacher, 
having broken open the lodge and killed the venison of Justice 
Shallow, — a wrong he greatly aggravates by the effrontery with 
which he meets Shallow's complaints. He answers Slender, also, 
in the same vein, saying, "Slender, I broke your head, what 
matter have you against me?" These incidents have no conse- 
quences nor bearing upon the action of the piece, and seem to be 
introduced only to lay open at the outset the lawless and discour- 
teous behavior of Falstaff. Though he never lacks brightness of 
thought and expression, Falstaff's tone is low, and argues debase- 
ment of mind and manners ; his followers are thieves, for whose 
honesty he vouches,, even while sharing in the proceeds of their 
larcenies ; in all respects, he is destitute of dignity and honor, 
and, as Hazlitt says of him, " he is a bare-faced knave." 

Yet his exuberant wit, and unfailing perception of the humor- 
ous side of things, together with his genial nature and freedom 
from malice, render him, in spite of his vices and dishonesty, a 
most captivating companion, of whose society we never tire. He 
is irresistibly amusing, and puts every impropriety in so ludicrous 
a light that we are forced to laugh, and even to forgive — for we 
seldom judge harshly those who divert us. 

Falstaff is well aware that his rank and familiarity with the 
Court will give him great consequence with the wives of plain cit- 
izens, like Mistress Page and Mistress Ford, but the attentions 
they show him and the natural curiosity with which they observe 
him as a stranger of some distinction are misconstrued by him 
into an admiration of his person. This conclusion, which has no 
support in the truth of things, — and that a man of his knowledge 
of the world should entertain it would be amazing, except for 
instances quite as gross that one may daily meet with, — leads 
him to form a plan of which he discourses with his rascally fol- 
lowers ; for he has neither delicacy nor dignity that will prevent 
his confiding to these paltry knaves, as parties in interest, his 
intent of making love to the two women for the purpose of cozen- 
ing them and their husbands out of their money. 









508 THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 

The passage, it will be observed, is, in its mode of expression, 
in entire keeping with the idea that the world is one of words. 

" Fahtaff. Briefly I do mean to make love to Ford's wife ; 1 spy entertain- 
ment in her; she discourses, she carves, she gives the leer of invitation ; I can 
construe the action of her familiar style : and the hardest voice of her beha- 
viour, to be English'd rightly, is, ' I am Sir John Falstaff's.' " 

Pistol. He hath study'd her will and translates her will out of honesty into 
English." Act. I. Sc. 3. 

Falstaff through vanity jumps to the conclusion that he will 
have an easy victory over the two women and that his greater ex- 
perience of the world will easily outwit their simplicity ; and as 
for any complaint their husbands can make, he can answer it " by 
staring such mechanical salt-butter rogues out of their wits." 

But how ill he has defined in his own mind the real natures of 
those he esteems so lightly is apparent in their comments on his 
letter. Mistress Page says : — 

" What a Herod of Jewry is this ? O wicked, wicked world ! one, that is 
well-nigh worn to pieces with age, to shew himself a youthful gallant ! What 
an unweighed behaviour has this Flemish drunkard pick'd (with the devil's 
name) out of my conversation, that he dares in this manner to assay me ? 
Why, he hath not been thrice in my company ! What should I say to him ? I 
was then frugal of my mirth — heaven forgive me. . . . How shall / be re- 
venged on him ? for revenged I will be, as sure as his guts are made of pud- 
dings." 

Mistress Ford in her comments dwells on the want of fitness 
between Falstaff's words and thoughts. 

" I shall think the worse of fat men, as long as I have an eye, to make dif- 
ference of men's liking ! And yet he would not swear ; prais'd women's mo- 
desty ; and gave such orderly and well-behav'd reproof to all uncomeliness, that 
/ would have sworn his disposition would have gone to the truth of his words but they 
do no more adhere and keep place together than the hundredth psalm to the tune 
of ' Green Sleeves.' " 

Falstaff's sense of importance and superiority to the humble 
people about him lays him open to their sly flatteries ; he does not 
dream that they see through him or that they would presume to 
outwit or to make sport of him; and thus he becomes the dupe 
of even humble Mistress Quickly, who, too ignorant not to stumble 
in her grammar, is yet fine enough and keen enough to adminis- 
ter doses of flattery to Sir John, which he swallows without the 
slightest suspicion that he is made ridiculous. She tells him that 
the good women, Mistress Page and Mistress Ford, who had been 



THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 509 

utterly deaf to all the wooings of nobles and courtiers when the 
Court lay at Windsor, had succumbed at once to his superior 
charms. This honeyed poison she hides in the following flowers 
of speech. 

"Marry, this is the short and the long of it ; you have brought her into such 
a canaries as 't is wonderful. The best courtier of them all when the Court lay 
at Windsor, could never have brought her to such a canary. Yet there has been 
knights and lords and gentlemen with their coaches I warrant you, coach after 
coach, letter after letter, gift after gift : smelling so sweetly (all musk), and 
so rustling I warrant you, in silk and gold : and in such alligant terms ; and in 
such wine and sugar of the best, and the fairest, that would have won any 
woman's heart ; and, I warrant you, they could never get an eye-wink of her 
. . . and I warrant you, they could never get her so much as sip on a cup with 
the proudest of them all : and yet there has been earls, nay, which is more, pen- 
sioners : but I warrant you, all is one with her. 

Fal. But what says she to me ? be brief, my good she-Mercury. 

Quickly. Marry, she hath received your letter, for the which she thanks you a 
thousand times. ... I have another messenger to your worship : Mistress Page 
has her hearty commendations to you too . . . and she hopes there will come a 
time. I never knew a woman so dote upon a man ; surely, I think you have 
charms, la : yes, in truth. 

Fal. Not I, I assure thee ; setting the attraction of my good parts aside, I 
have no other charms," etc. 

This intoxicating draught causes FalstafT to lose his head en- 
tirely, and he exclaims : — 

" Ah ! ha ! Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, have I encompassed you ? go 
to, via ! " 

" Say'st thou so, old Jack, go thy ways : I '11 make more of thy old body 
than I have done," etc. 

To use his own words, when he afterwards comes to his senses, — 
"To see now how wit may be made a jack-a-lent, when 't is upon ill em- 
ployment ! " 

FalstafFs intrigues give the main movement to the piece. His 
counterfeit love is, of course, without the slightest support in 
truth, as, on the other hand, the pretended favor with which it is 
received by the wives is equally empty of all reality ; and so to the 
end of the joke ; the whole action of the piece is carried forward 
by false pretenses, thus making the play the development of kb the 
form" of a jest, or that which has no ground in truth or fact. 

When at the conclusion Falstaff is exposed, the jeers of the 
characters constitute a definition of him. 

"Mrs. Page. Why, Sir John, do you think, though wo would have thrust 



/ 



510 THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSORS 

virtue out of our hearts by the head and shoulders and have given ourselves 
without scruple to hell, that ever the devil could have made you our delight ? 

Ford. What, a hodge-pudding, a bag of flax ? 

Mrs. Page. A puff 'd man ? 

Page. Old, cold, wither'd, and of intolerable entrails ? 

Ford. And one that is as slanderous as Satan ? 

Page. And poor as Job ? 

Ford. And as wicked as his wife ? 

Evans. And given to . . . taverns and sacks and wines and metheglins, 
and to drinkiugs and swearings and starings, pribbles and prabbles ? " 

It is characteristic of Falstaff that upon discovering the tricks 
that have been played upon him he frankly owns that " he does 
perceive that he has been made an ass," but it is equally in char- 
acter with his " admirable dexterity of wit " that he gives an 
humorous turn to the affair, and breaks the force of the ridicule 
that is poured out against him by pretending that the greatest 
humiliation he suffers is in being obliged " to stand at the taunt " 
of the Welsh parson and endure his gibes in broken English. 

" Fal. Have I laid my brain in the sun and dried it, that it wants matter 
to prevent such gross o'erreaching as this ? Am I ridden with a Welsh goat 
too? Shall I have a coxcomb of frize ? 'Tis time I were choked with a 
piece of toasted cheese. 

Evans. Seese is not good to give putter ; your pelly is all putter. 

Fal. Seese and putter ! have I liv'd to stand at the taunt of one that 
makes fritters of English ? this is enough to be the decay of lust and late- 
walking through the realm." 

All Falstaff's words and actions are false and empty, his aims 
low and frivolous, his life without serious meaning, yet through- 
out he is provocative of mirth ; and he is, therefore, an embodi- 
ment of the "forni" of a jest, and was created to be the source 
of perpetual laughter. 

Empty self-consequence has a special representative in Justice 
Shallow. His dignity is grievously wounded by Falstaff's refusing 
redress for breaking into his lodge and beating his men ; but his 
complaint becomes a jest through the clamor he raises about it as 
a "riot" and "a Star-chamber matter." Even when Page tells 
, him that Falstaff had " in some sort confessed " the wrong, he is 
not appeased, but says : — 

" If it be confessed, it is not redressed ; is not that so, Master Page ? He 
hath wronged me ; — indeed he hath ; at a word, he hath ; — believe me, 
Robert Shallow, Esquire, saith, he is wrong'd." 






rr 



THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. '511 

Self-importance, however, never reached a more attenuated 
form than in Abraham Slender. His manners are ridiculous and 
his speech inane. His characteristic is ineptitude and his words 
and actions are invariably unfitted to time, place, and occasion. 
He tells us, however, that he is " a poor gentleman born," and 
that he " keeps three men and a boy till his mother be dead," but 
that which uplifts him most in his own estimation is his kinship 
with the great Justice Shallow, in whose reflected light he shines. 
He possesses also a small landed estate, which gives him consid- 
eration, not only in his own eyes but also in those of prudent 
fathers with marriageable daughters ; and in his house there is 
" a great chamber," to enter which is the limit of his pride and 
his joy. " I would I might never come into my great chamber 
again," he says, by way of emphasizing his statement that Pistol 
had picked his pocket. So, too, his gloves and his hat are of 
that importance that he swears by them. " By this hat, then, he 
in the red face had it," he says of Bardolph's stealing his " mill- 
sixpences " and " Edward shovel-boards." 

Slender's words are without serious import or import of any 
kind, at least any that is appropriate to the occasion, — with one 
exception, and that a very important one. It is his answer to 
Shallow and Evans' inquiries whether he will marry Ann Page. 
The answer he makes is directly in accordance with the rule of 
propriety; in fact it is the rule of propriety itself, or the limit 
of conduct assigned by reason ; yet Evans and Shallow get out 
of all patience with him for not answering, as they suppose, to the 
point, until Slender declares his willingness to marry, in terms 
that are utterly absurd and contradictory, and these the two wise- 
acres accept as perfectly satisfactory. 

" Shallow. Come, coz ; come, coz ; . . . there is, as 't were, a tender, a kind 
of tender, made afar off by Sir Hugh here. Do you understand me ? 

Slen. Ay, sir, you shall find me reasonable ; if it be so, I shall do that that is 
reason. 

Evans. The question is concerning your marriage. 

Shal. Ay, there 's the point, sir. 

Evans. Marry, is it ; the very point of it ; to Mistress Ann Page. 

Slen. Why, if it be so, I will marry her upon any reasonable demands. 

Evans. But can you affection the 'oman ? Let us command to know that 
of your mouth or of your lips ; for di vers philosophers hold that the lips is 
parcel of the mouth. Therefore, precisely t can you carry your good- will to 
the maid ? 



/ 



512 THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 

Shot. Cousin Abraham Slender, can you love her ? 

Slen. I hope, sir — I will do as it shall become one that would do reason. 

Evans. Nay, Got 's lords and his ladies, you must speak possitable, if you 
can carry her your desires towards her. 

Shal. That you must. Will you, upon good dowry, marry her ? 

Slen. I will do a greater thing than that, upon your request, cousin, in any 
reason. 

Shal. Nay, conceive me, conceive me, sweet coz : what I do is to pleasure 
you, coz ; cau you love the maid ? 

Slen. I will marry her, sir, at your request ; but if there be no great love 
in the beginning, yet heaven may decrease it upon better acquaintance, when 
we are marry 'd and have more occasion to know one another : I hope, upon 
familiarity will grow more contempt ; but if you say, marry her, I will marry 
her ; that I am freely dissolved, and dissolutely. 

Evans. It is a fery discretion answer ; save the fauP is in the 'ort disso- 
lutely : the 'ort is, according to our meaning, resolutely : his meaning is good. 

Shal. Ay, I think my cousin meant well." Act I. Sc. 1. 

Though humble in station, Mistress Quickly is not an unimpor- 
tant personage. She is Dr. Caius's servant, and of her, in this 
capacity, Sir Hugh contrives the following definition : — 

Evans. Ask of Dr. Caius' house which is the way ; and there dwells one 
Mistress Quickly, which is in the manner of his nurse, or his dry-nurse, or his 
cook, or his laundry, his washer and his wringer." 

She herself does better than this : speaking of Dr. Caius as her 
master, she says : " I may call him my master, look you, for I 
keep his house and / wash, wring, brew, hake, scour, dress meat 
and drink, make the beds, and do all myself" 

Mistress Quickly represents a common phase of self -consequence ; 
she boasts of favor and influence in quarters where favor and in- 
fluence are desirable to have. Mistress Ann Page is. the cynosure 
of neighboring eyes in Windsor, and it is with her that Mistress 
Quickly claims to have a voice potential. " She knows Ann's 
mind ; never a woman in Windsor," she says, " knows more of 
Ann's mind than I do, nor can do with her more than I can, 
thank Heaven." Shrewd, though frivolous, she pretends zeal for 
her master, Dr. Caius, whom she cajoles with stories of Ann's 
love for him ; yet is unscrupulously profuse of promises of suc- 
cess to all of Ann's suitors alike, and professes regret — no doubt 
sincerely — that she cannot bring about Ann's marriage with all 
of them. She would, if possible, please everybody : having no 
principle she is carried by the last impression. 

She says of Fenton : — 



THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 513 

" A woman would run through fire and water for such a kind heart. But 
yet I would my master had Mistress Ann ; or I would Master Slender had her ; 
or in sooth, I would Master Fenton had her ; I will do what I can for all 
three ! for so I have promised, and I '11 be as good as my word ; but speciously 
for Master Fenton," etc. 

Her special merits shine forth in her services to the " merry 
wives." They know her capabilities ; and casting about for a 
messenger to Falstaff, they select " that foolish carrion " Mistress 
Quickly (as Mistress Ford calls her), both agreeing that she will 
" fit it." In this business she is in her element. Her mixture 
of cunning and simplicity befools " the old fat fellow ; " and she 
even goes so far as to instruct him in keeping up appearances for 
morality's sake. The page is spoken of as a go-between; and 
Mistress Quickly admonishes Sir John 

" In any case to have a nay-word, that you may know one another's mind, 
and the boy never need to understand anything, for 9 t is not good that children 
should know any wickedness : old folks, you know, have discretion, as they say, 
and know the world." Act II. Sc. 2. 

Mistress Quickly's morality is purely verbal ; it is a mere 
trick of speech and habit of invoking blessings, and ejaculating 
pious wishes that are so absurdly inappropriate to time and per- 
son that they evidently represent nothing in her mind, and are 
words only. 

Sir Hugh Evans the Welsh schoolmaster, and Dr. Caius the 
French doctor, have humors and eccentricities which make them 
jests in themselves, and the effect is greatly heightened by their 
broken English ; they are standing examples of the misuse and 
misapplication of words. Dr. Caius feels great importance from 
his practice at Court, and his professional intimacy with lords and 
ladies, while Sir Hugh plumes himself upon his knowledge of 
English, and does not hesitate to correct the grammar of his com- 
panions in language that is ludicrously incorrect both in idiom 
and pronunciation. 

Falstaff's followers, Nym, Pistol, and Bardolph, are farce 
characters ; they are all rogues alike, and are varied, not so much 
by cast of character as by modes of speech. Nym may be known 
by his use of the word " humour," which he presses into service 
on all occasions ; as Page says of him, " He frights humour out of 
its wits." 

33 



/ 









514 THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 

In Nym's mouth, " humour " is a word so ill-defined that ii 
means anything and everything alike. 

Pistol's bombast — behind .which there is nothing — runs into 
verse and rhyme so naturally and constantly that when, by 
chance, he drops into prose it seems to be out of character ; while 
Bardolph, who is less affected and more sensible than the other 
two, occasionally indulges in slang so unintelligible that Slender 
mistakes it for Latin. 

With these characters thus marked by their speech rather than 
their sentiments, may be placed the Host of the Garter, who 
has no other name than his title, which in itself is a definition. 
He bubbles over with humor and vivacity, is a great wag and 
practical joker, and frequently challenges our admiration of his 
depth and reach by inquiries, " Said I well ?" " Did I well?" 
"Am I subtle? am I politic? am I a Machiavel?" He affects 
to speak " scholarly and wisely," but like Sir Hugh is exceed- 
ingly tautological ; and, like Nym and Pistol, is an impersonation 
of a style ; he is painted by his use or misuse of words rather 
than by their inward meaning. 

As this comedy exhibits a world of words, great stress is laid 
upon the giving of names, especially those carrying a moral im- 
port and affecting reputation. It has been observed that the 
piece furnishes a conspicuous instance of the misuse of a word in 
Sir John Falstaff, whose title of " knight," which connotes valor, 
courtesy, honor, and love, is ludicrously misapplied to so gross an 
embodiment of sensuality and selfishness as he is. So wide a 
difference between the name and the thing suggests the careless- 
ness in the application of nanies and titles, and indeed the misuse 
of words generally, as wise, foolish, honest, vile, gentleman, 
knave, and other descriptive epithets, each one of which is pro 
tanto a definition. On this subject, Master Ford, after having in 
his disguise as Master Brook listened to Falstaff's abuse of him, 
culminating with " Ford 's a knave, and I will aggravate his style ; 
thou, Master Brook, shalt know him for a knave and cuckold," 
thus comments : — 

" What a damn'd Epicurean rascal is this ! My heart is ready to crack 
with impatience. . . . See the hell of having a false woman ! my bed shall be 
abused, my coffers ransacked, my reputation gnawn at ; and I shall not only 
receive this villainous wrong, but stand under the adoption of abominable terms, 
and by him that does me the wrong. Terms ! names! Amaimon sounds well / 



THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 515 

Lucifer, well ; Barbason, well; yet they are devils 9 additions, the names of fiends : 
but cuckold ! wittol ! cuckold ! the devil himself hath not such a name ! " 

Act II. Sc. 2. 

When Slender accuses Bardolph, Nym, and Pistol of picking 
his pocket, they make their defense by calling names. 

" Slender. Marry, I have matter in iny head against you and your coney- 
catching rascals, Bardolph, Nym, and Pistol. 
Bar. You Banbury cheese. 
Slen. Ay, it 's no matter. 
Pist. How now, Mephistophilus. 
Slen. Ay, it 's no matter," etc. Act I. Sc. 1. 

The dialogue is couched in the familiar diction we hear in every 
day's talk; and abounds in those inelegant, yet expressive vulgar- 
isms, that are in current use among the common people, and are 
the vernacular of the language, such as "I'll never put my finger 
in the fire for it," "If I did n't think it had been Ann Page, I 
hope I may never stir" " That 's meat and drink to me now," 
"My finger itches to make one," and many others. 

Definition or limitation is a fundamental conception of the 
piece ; on its moral side, it is the rule of manners, or the limita- 
tion of the conduct by the reason, that is, by the knowledge of the 
true natures of men ; and on the philosophic side, it is the rule of 
language, or the limitation of the meanings of words by the reason 
or the knowledge of the true qualities of the things the words 
stand for. 

According to Richardson, " to define (Lat. definire, quasi 
finem dare} is to set a bound or limit, to describe the bounds or 
limits, the end, the termination, and thus consequentially, to con- 
clude, to determine, the ends ; precisely to express, fully to de- 
scribe, exactly to declared 

With the definite, then, will go the limited, bounded, ended, the 
precise, exact, and the like, of which the opposites are the ill- 
defined, the vague, general, etc., and these conceptions, which 
mutually balance and relieve each other and unite in one impres- 
sion, will be found continually recurring in the 'diction and 
phraseology, yet without attracting particular attention, while by 
constantly striking the same note they fill the mind with a sense 
of one predominant tone pervading the piece. 

A few examples of each will be given. 

Indefinites are expressed : — 



/ 






516 THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 

1. By phrases, vague, general, and indefinite in themselves ; as 

"It's neither here nor there;" "It's all one;" "He hath a 

legion of angels." 

" He woos both high and low, both rich and poor, 
Both young and old, one with another, Ford." 

2. By numbers taken indefinitely ; as, " I warrant he hath 
thousand of these letters ; " " If he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs ; ' 
" As I will desires among jive thousand and Jive hundred too." 

In the next there is a definite phrase followed by an indefinite 
of this class : — 

" None but he shall have her 
Though twenty thousand worthier come to crave her." 

The following, also, combines the two : — 

" Why, thou unconfinable baseness, it is as much as I can do, to keep the 

terms of my honour precise." 

3. By tautology, which defeats precision by using more words 
than are needed. 

Of this fault, Sir Hugh and the host habitually furnish ex- 
amples. 

Falstaff, who seldom wastes his words, yet in the dismissal of 
Nym and Pistol falls into tautology : — 

" Rogues, hence, avaunt ! vanish like hail-stones, go ! 
Trudge, plod, away, d* the hoof ; seek shelter, pack" 

Here ten different commands are given for the execution of one 
purpose. 

Many examples will be found of the indefinite and unprecise, 
under each of these three heads. The broken English of Sir 
Hugh and Dr. Caius is specially prolific of blunders. 

Of phrases that express the definite, the limited, the ended, the 
following are some : — 

" Hear and end it," " the sword should end it," "period of my 
ambition," "period of the jest," "and the very instant of meet- 
ing," " the very same, the very hand, the very words," " I love 
thee, and none but thee" 

In the following phrases, a limit is assigned to the subject 
spoken of : — 

<* I shall as soon quarrel at it as any man in England." 
"As honest as ever servant shall come in house withal." 






THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 517 

" Never a woman in Windsor knows more of Ann's mind than I do." 

" An honest woman as ever broke bread." 

" One that will not miss you morning nor evening prayer as any is in Wind- 
sor, whoe'er be the other." 

" Never a wife in Windsor leads a better life than she does." 

" If there be an honest woman, . . . she is one." 

" If any man may, you may, as sood as any." 

" I love you as well as I love any woman in Gloucestershire." 

" As foolish Christian creatures as I would desire." 

In the next there is a limit placed to the desires, — 

" I had rather than forty shillings, I had my book of songs." 

" I had rather than a thousand pounds he were out of the house ; " — 

or the reverse, or limit to unwillingness, — 

" I will rather trust a Fleming with my butter, parson Hugh the Welshman 
with my cheese, . . . than my wife with herself." 

Observe also the short definitions that are frequently intro- 
duced, as Slender's of Ann Page, — 

" She has brown hair and speaks small like a woman," — 

in which Slender assigns to Ann as a peculiarity that which is 
common to the whole sex ; or Shallow's definition of Page's 
dog, — 

" Sir, he 's a good dog and a fair dog : Can there more be said ? he is good 
and fair." 

The criticisms that Ford's companions make upon his jealousy 
are notable instances of judgments passed upon conduct according 
to the rule or limit of reason. 

" Ford. Ay, but if it prove true, Master Page, have you then any way to 
unfool me again ? Set down the basket, villain : Somebody call my wife ; 
Youth in a basket. Oh, you panderly rascals ! there 's a knot, a gang, upack, 
a conspiracy, against me. . . . 

Page. Why, this passes [the due limit] ! Master Ford, you are not to go 
loose any longer ; you must be pinioned. 

Evans. Why, this is lunatics ! this is mad as a mad dog." 

The serious and rational view of things which gives relief to 
the jocularity and immorality that pervade the play is imperson- 
ated by Fenton and Ann Page. 






518 THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 

Of Fenton, the host gives this definition : — 

" Host. What say you to young Mr. Fenton ? he capers, he dances, he has 
eyes of youth, he writes verses, he speaks holy-day, he smells April and May : he 
will carry 't, he will carry V 

Of these qualities, however, we see little or nothing in Fenton. 
Both he and Ann Page have depth of import ; they are sincere 
and earnest, and discern clearly what is of real importance to their 
happiness. The following short dialogue displays their natures 
and contrasts their aims and sentiments with the worldly and 
frivolous views of life of those around them : — 

" Fen. I see I cannot get thy father's love ; 
Therefore no more turn me to him, sweet Nan. 
Ann. Alas ! how then ? 
Fen. Why, thou must be thyself. 
He doth object, I am too great of birth ; 
And that, my state being gall'd with my expense, 
I seek to heal it only by his wealth. 
Besides these, other bars he lays before me — 
My riots past, my wild societies ; 
And tells me 't is a thing impossible 
I should love thee, but as a property. 
Ann. May be, he tells you true. 
Fen. No, heaven so speed me in my time to come. 
Albeit I will confess thy father's wealth 
Was the first motive that I woo'd thee, Ann : 
Yet wooing thee, I found thee of more value 
Than stamps in gold or sums in sealed bags ; 
And 't is the very riches of thyself 
That now I aim at. 

Ann. Gentle Mr. Fenton, 

Yet seek my father's love ; still seek it, sir ; 
If opportunity and humblest suit 
Cannot attain it, why then " — 

Master Page would fain marry his daughter to Slender, simply 
because he has a landed estate, while his wife schemes to marry 
her to Dr. Caius, because he has money and a Court acquaintance ; 
neither gives any heed to the remonstrances of the young girl her- 
self, who, though dutiful and extremely engaging in the quiet 
propriety of her demeanor and the mingled humor and good sense 
of her remarks, has her own opinions and her own will, if need 
be, to follow them. And here comes in the morality of the play, 
which, when compulsion is used to enforce demands beyond the 



THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 519 

limits of reason, declares that the offense is " holy " that resists 
them. 

u Fen. The offence is holy that she hath committed. 
Since therein she doth evitate and shun 
A thousand irreligious cursed hours 
Which forced marriage would have brought upon her." 

The imperfect connection between the scenes of the piece has 
been alluded to, but one scene (Act III. Sc. 1) has no connection 
with the action whatever ; nevertheless it is easy to perceive how 
its place in a play which is evolved from the " form " of a jest 
may be accounted for. In the first place, it deals especially with 
words and the mistakes of speech, being the examination by the 
Welsh parson of a pupil in his Latin accidence ; and next, the 
mispronunciation by Sir Hugh of the Latin together with the 
comments of Mistress Quickly, who takes them for English words, 
gives rise to a coarse and not very witty series of jokes, which, 
however, chime in with the prevailing tone of the piece. It may 
be observed that Sir Hugh's Welsh pronunciation of the Latin 
hanc, hoc, as hang-hog, and Mistress Quickly's remark that "she '11 
warrant that that is good Latin for bacon" is the same jest that 
Bacon records of his father, Sir Nicholas, who, having tried and 
condemned to death a criminal named Hog, who appealed for 
mercy on the ground of relationship, Hog being akin to Bacon., 
replied that " Hog was not Bacon until it was well hanged." 

As a jest is in its essence a breach of manners and an abuse of 
speech, the play is filled with solecisms of manners and language, 
and seems to have been written to render words themselves a 
laughing-stock ; and the world here represented as made up of 
names may be taken as a jeu d? esprit or burlesque illustration of 
those worlds created by the old philosophies, and so vigorously 
denounced by Bacon as being composed of definitions, that is, of 
genera and species, which are the mere names of things, of which 
the real natures are utterly unknown ; and therefore worlds of 
words without meaning and no better than jests. 



KOMEO AND JULIET. 

" The nature of man coveteth divination," and out of attempts 
to satisfy this desire have arisen many occult sciences, among 
which, no doubt, the one most popular and captivating to the 
imagination is astrology. This science assumes to read in the 
stars the lives and fortunes of men. Observations of the heavens 
were made at some particular hour, when, as the planets chanced 
to be posited in friendly or in hostile " houses," or as their as- 
pects were benign or malevolent, they were supposed to portend 
consequences good or evil. The temperaments of men, also, — 
both of mind and body, — were thought to be infused with cer- 
tain qualities and their dispositions determined by the planet pre- 
dominant at the hour of birth; while still another purpose of 
consulting the stars, and one, perhaps, the most important and 
practical cf all, was the answering of " horary" questions, that is, 
" the election " or choice of hours most fit and auspicious for 
enterprises comprising pretty much all the transactions of public 
and private life. The observations thus made were collected and 
stated in a writing called " a horoscope," by means of which an 
adept in astrology could read the future fortunes, good or bad, of 
its subject, and point to the hours which would be auspicious 
and so to be used, or unfortunate and so to be avoided. Such 
an interpretation of the heavens was called " a judgment," and 
the science on this account was styled "-judicial astrology." 

The term "horoscope" literally signifies " an observation of 
the hour or season ; " the writings so named were rather scientific 
than literary, yet they constituted a very celebrated class of pro- 
ductions, and although they were " cast " for a great variety of 
purposes, they all rest on one underlying idea or u form," namely, 
that the stars, as their aspects are of love or of hate, are causes 
from observation of which a judgment can be made of the effects, 
good or evil, that will befall men, or the particular hours and 
seasons determined which possess a fitness or unfitness for certain 
lines of action ; and inasmuch as men consult the stars for pre- 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 521 

cisely the same reason that they take counsel of the wise and 
experienced with respect to their conduct at any time, the simplest 
statement of " the form " of a horoscope seems to be that, like a 
counsel, it is a prediction from a knowledge of causes of the con- 
sequences that will follow upon a certain condition of things or 
certain events or actions. 

The two prominent figures of the play are a pair of young 
lovers, who are under the influence of a powerful passion, which 
is intent only on its own gratification, and utterly regardless of 
consequences ; and this picture is brought into high relief by the 
poet's taking the " form " of a horoscope as his structural prin- 
ciple, and making " the observation of the hour " and a forecast 
of consequences the law of his piece. 

A horoscope has a parallel in mundane affairs in the exercise 
of a wise foresight with which the prudent man scans the aspects 
of men and the times in order to forecast their effects and to select 
the most favorable season for his own designs ; and, indeed, the 
predictions of experience, which by its knowledge of causes pos- 
sesses " something of prophetic strain," are analogous to " the 
form," or, rather, are " the form " of a horoscope; for the most 
familiar examples of such predictions are the counsels and warn- 
ings of the wise with respect to the consequences of this or that 
line of conduct. 

In the world, therefore, depicted in this highly poetical play r 
every man before he acts casts, or should cast, his horoscope by 
observing the influence of the time and the aspects of things, 
from which, as they indicate favor or disfavor, he calculates the 
consequences of his own and others' conduct. Hope and fear 
attend on every action of which the issue is uncertain, and men 
expect good or forebode evil according as they see or feel or fancy 
that events must, in the natural order of things, have favorable 
or unfavorable issues. As among the heavenly bodies, some look 
with a benign and some with a malignant aspect, some are situated 
in friendly and others in hostile " houses," so in this lower sphere 
the aspects of the greatest influence are those of men and women 
(the latter being called in the play "earth-treading stars") 
whose loves or hates augur good or evil, of which, again, the 
effects are greatly increased by the friendly or hostile kk houses ; " 
in other words, the relations and connections to which they belong 
and of which they form part. 



522 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

But to enlarge the scope of his piece, and obtain a direct par- 
allel between the influence of the stars and that of the sights and 
sounds of this terrestrial world, the poet introduces into the play- 
certain doctrines of Bacon with respect to what he terms " mag- 
netic " or " immateriate virtues" which are analogous in their 
operation upon the minds of men to the irradiations of the stars 
upon their tempers ; and, indeed, the irradiations of the stars are 
themselves mentioned as one class of such " immateriate virtues." 
These doctrines are laid down in The Natural History and partly 
in The Advancement, though it must be confessed that these 
books had not seen the light when this play was produced. 

After speaking of those who " held that if the spirit of man 
do give a fit touch to the spirit of the world by strong imagina- 
tions and beliefs, it might command Nature, for Paracelsus and 
some darksome authors of magic do ascribe to imagination exalted 
the power of miracle-working faith," Bacon adds, " With these 
vast and bottomless follies men have been (in part) entertained ; " 
and then goes on : — 

" But we that hold firm to the works of God and to the sense, 
which is God's lamp, will enquire with all sobriety and severity, 
whether there be to be found in the footsteps of Nature any such 
transmission and influx of immateriate virtues, and what the 
force of imagination is, either upon the body or upon another 
body. ... 

" We will divide the several kinds of the operation by trans- 
mission of spirits and imagination, which will give no small light 
to the experiments that follow. All operations by transmission 
of spirits and imagination have this, that they work at distance 
and not at touch; and they are these being distinguished. 

4 The first is the transmission or emission of the thinner and 
more airy parts of bodies, as in odours and infections, and this is 
of all the rest the most corporeal. 

fc The second is the transmission or emission of those things 
that we call spiritual species, as visibles and sounds, etc. . . . 

'* The fourth is the emission of spirits and immateriate powers 
and virtues, in those things which work by the universal configu- 
ration and sympathy of the world ... of this kind is the mo- 
tion of gravity, etc. 

1 The fifth is the emission of spirits ; namely, the operation of 
the spirits of the mind of man upon other spirits ; and this is of 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 523 

a double nature : the operation of the affections if they be vehe- 
ment ; and the operation of the imagination, if it be strong. 
But these two are so coupled as we shall handle them together ; 
for when an envious or amorous aspect doth infect the spirit of 
another, there is joined both affection and imagination. 

" The sixth is the influence of the heavenly bodies, besides those 
two manifest ones of heat and light" etc. Nat. Hist. Cent. X. 
§§ 904-909. 

" The affections (no doubt) do make the spirits more powerful 
and active, and especially those affections which draw the spirits 
into the eyes ; which are two, love and envy. As for love, the 
Platonists (some of them) go so far as to hold that the spirit 
of the lover doth pass into the spirits of the person loved, which 
causeth the desire of return into the body whence it was emitted ; 
whereupon followeth that appetite of contact and conjunction 
which is in lovers. . . . We see the opinion of fascination is an- 
dent of procuring love, and fascination is ever by the eye" Nat. 
Hist. Cent. X. § 944. 

This same doctrine of " magnetic virtues " he introduces into 
his interpretation of the fable of Pan, viz. : — 

" The body of Nature is elegantly represented as covered with 
hairs, in allusion to the rays of things. For rays are the hairs 
of Nature, nor is there anything that is not more or less radiant. 
This is seen most evidently in the faculty of sight, and no less in 
all magnetic virtues, having effects which take place at a distance. 
For whatever produces an effect at a distance may be truly said 
to emit rays." De Aug. Book IV. ch. xiii. 

The above-mentioned doctrine of Fascination is also introduced 
into the De Augmentis, where it is spoken of in connection with 
the Art of Divination in a passage that will be cited, as both 
subjects, particularly the latter, is largely illustrated in the piece. 

" Fascination is the power and act of imagination intensive 
upon the body of another. . . . Others, looking with a clearer 
eye at the secret workings and impressions of things, the irradia- 
tions of the senses, the passage of contagion from body to body, 
the conveyance of magnetic virtues, have concluded that it is 
much more probable there should be impressions, conveyances, 
and communications from spirit to spirit (seeing that the spirit is 
above all other things both strenuous to act and soft and tender 
to be acted. on), whence have arisen those conceits (now become 



524 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

as it were popular) of the mastering spirit, of men unluchy and 
ill-omened, of the glances of love, envy, and the like." De Aug. 
Book IV. ch. iii. 

" The operation of the mind and its passions upon the body- 
has also found a place in medicine. For there is no physician of 
any skill who does not attend to the accidents of the mind as a 
thing most material towards recoveries. But another question 
has been but sparingly enquired into, and no wise in propor- 
tion to its depth and worth, namely, how far the very i??iagina- 
tion of the mind or a thought strongly fixed and exalted into a 
hind of faith is able to alter the body of the imaginant. For 
although it has a manifest power to hurt, yet it follows not it 
has the same power to help." De Aug. Book IV. ch. i. 

With regard to Divination, he thus discourses : — 

" Divination has been anciently and not unfitly divided into 
two parts, Artificial and Natural. Artificial makes prediction by 
argument, concluding upon signs and tokens ; Natural forms a 
presage from an inward presentiment of the mind without the 
help of signs. Artificial is of two sorts ; one argues from tauses, 
the other only from experiments by a kind of blind authority. 
. . . Artificial divination of both kinds is dispersed among differ- 
ent knowledges. The astrologer has his predictions from the po- 
sition of the stars. The physician likewise has his predictions of 
approaching death, of recovery, of coming symptoms of diseases, 
from the pulse, the look of the patient, and the like," etc. De 
Aug. Book IV. ch. iii. 

This tragedy, then, which adopts the " form " of a horoscope 
as its organizing principle, substitutes for the irradiations of 
the stars the rays of things in this terrestrial world ; that is, 
the sights and sounds which are constantly crowding on our atten- 
tion, and of which some are extremely powerful over the feelings, 
being, in fact, often decisive of the fates of men. All sights and 
sounds, unless verv familiar, excite in some degree love or hate, 
but this is especially the case with those aspects and influences of 
things which appeal directly to our sympathy or antipathy, as the 
human face and eye and speech, and generally the beauty of men 
and women : these feelings are liable to run into great and uncon- 
trollable extremes, unless checked by consideration of the conse- 
quences of their indulgence ; and in forecasting such consequences 
it is especially needful that it be done by the judgment reasoning 



id 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 525 

from cause to effect, and not by the imagination, which paints the 
future as the desires and passions would have it. 

In this piece, therefore, the judgment is exercised with respect 
to sights and sounds, and the feelings they awaken, comprising 
the influences of beauty and the power of the eye and human as- 
pect over the mind ; and also the power of sounds, particularly 
of words and names, together with the " transmission of immate- 
riate virtues " and the occult power of " the imagination and 
spirit over the spirit of man," and, in short, all sights and sounds 
and rays of things that move the feelings and excite love or hatred 
in any degree. And as the astrologer forms " a judgment " with 
respect to the future from the good or evil aspects of the stars, so 
in this nether world, men must form a judgment on the sights 
and sounds that work upon their affections and portend happiness 
or misery to their futures. 

In making these judgments, however, men are often fatally 
misled by their imaginations, which idealize the objects of their 
affections, enhancing the merit and veiling the defects of what 
they love, and denying any virtue and attributing all evil to what 
they hate ; in other words, they know but little or nothing of the 
real nature of what they judge ; they are governed by sights 
and sounds, without going beneath the surface to the deep and 
hidden truth of things. 

It may be observed .that it was precisely to correct these hasty 
and premature judgments or " anticipations " of the mind, more 
especially with reference to physical nature, though in reality ap- 
plicable to all subjects alike, that Bacon invented his method of 
induction. 

The most prominent instance in the piece of the influence of 
looks and aspects to move the mind is the mutual fascination 
which Romeo and Juliet exercise on one another ; and this is an 
illustration of that class (the "fifth " before mentioned) of M im- 
materiate virtues," which Bacon puts down as "emission of spirits 
or the operation of the spirits of the mind of man upon the 
spirits, and this is of a double nature, the operation of the affeo* 
tions if they be vehement, and the operation of the imagination 
if it be strong. But these are," he says, "coupled in an amorous 
glance, for when an amorous aspect doth infect the spirit of an- 
other there is joined both affection and imagination" Of this 
doctrine the sudden " bewitchment " at the first exchange of 
glances between liomeo and Juliet is clearly an instance. 



526 ROMEO AND JULIET. 



The Italian sky and climate given to this play, the midday 
heat, the moonlight nights, the song of the nightingale from the 
pomegranate-tree, and other touches of local coloring, are pointed 
out bv critics as instances of the harmony which is preserved in 
a Shakespearian play between external nature and the moral 
atmosphere of the piece ; and this, no doubt, proceeds from the 
poet's own vivid conception of the world which he portrays, and 
heightens immensely the beauty of the work as a poetic creation: 
but there is another and subtler harmony, which proceeds from 
the poet's art. and which contributes perhaps not so much to the 
beauty as to the truth of the picture. It is the correspondence 
between the characters and their environment : between the action 
of the piece and that peculiar phase of the social world in which 
it takes place. This mutual adaptation results from the devel- 
opment of the "form." which, in this case, being that of a horo- 
scope, causes the world here presented to be governed by " obser- 
vation or election of the hour." that is. by appointed hours and 
fixed dates for special actions. Both State and Church are regu- 
lated by stated periods for affairs. — in the one by terms, sessions. 
holidays, and the like ; in the other by festivals, fasts, and other 
ceremonial days. — of which dates some are mentioned in the 
piece; but Romeo and Juliet being a household tragedy it 
brings prominently forward the habits of domestic life, and these 
have their origin in the observation of the hour and the choice of 
times fittest for those uses that make up the domestic routine. 
A\ ork, play, sleep, meals, devotions, and other familiar observ- 
ances, as, for instance. Capulet's "old accustom'd feast." have 
each of them their appointed hours : and this " election " of hours 
having originally been made on account of their natural fitness 
for their purposes, they become, notwithstanding any slight vari- 
ation of individual choice, prevalent throughout the community, 
and tin authority as manners and morals ; just 

>tate customs, by prescription, become laws that main- 
tain the peace and order of society. To "keep good hours." i. <?.. 
to conform one's conduct to that use for which the hour is deemed 
md for which it rally employed, is a sign of well- 

ordered life and indicates prudence and morality. 

On the other hand, whatever happens out of the daily routine. 

whatever is untimely or out of order or of place, too early or too 

. or in any way at variance with the usual sequence of events 



OT7 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 527 

in civil or domestic life, is imputed to misconduct, misfortune, or 
mistake, exciting alarm and inquiry, and, where injury is inflicted, 
entailing punishment. In such cases pardon or punishment is 
awarded according to the ability of the offender to excuse himself 
by showing that he made due " observation of the hour," or, in 
other words, that he acted with all due circumspection, but that 
unforeseen causes beyond the scope of human calculation had 
thwarted his plans and drawn on sinister consequences. Thus 
the Friar, when Juliet awakes in the tomb, excuses the tragical 
failure of his plan by saying, — 

" A Greater Power than we can contradict 
Hath thwarted our intents." 

And thus, too, when he is found at midnight in the cemetery with 
implements in his possession for breaking open tombs, and at the 
same time it is discovered that the sepulchre of the Capulets has 
actually been forced, and near by are lying the bodies of Juliet, 
Romeo, and Paris, newly slain, — a spectacle calculated to excite 
the greatest fear and amazement, — he exculpates himself by a 
statement of the strange and unknown causes of the occurrence. 
He says : — 

" I am the greatest, able to do least, 

The most suspected (as the time and place 

Doth make against me) of this direful murder ; 

And here I stand both to impeach and purge 

Myself condemned and myself excused ," — 

and then gives a narrative of the hidden causes that have led up 
to the dire catastrophe. 

Conduct, therefore, which is a breach of custom, and events 
that fall out contrary to usage, excite apprehension as to their 
causes and anxiety as to their results ; they awaken forebodings 
of misadventure that either has already happened or is about to 
happen. The cure for all misgivings of this kind lies in a know- 
ledge of causes obtained by examining into all the relations of the 
circumstances with the main fact, thus constituting, as it were, a 
horoscope through which a presage can be made of the conse- 
quences that will follow and of the remedies to be applied. 

This is illustrated in a breach of custom by Romeo, who, dis- . 
tracted with love of Rosaline, turns day into night and night into 
day, an irregularity that greatly excites the solicitude of his 
father, who thus describes him : — 



/ 



52 S ROMEO AXD JULIET. 

■• Many a morning hath he there been seen 
Wi ingmentiiig the fresh morniDg dew. 

'..ling to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs 
Bur all so soon as the all-cheering sun 
Should in the furthest East begin to draw 
The shady curtains from Aurora's bed. 
Awav from light steals home my heavy son, 



And in ignorance of the causes of such conduct Montague adds 

this foreboding : — 

•• Black and portentous nius: it prove,. 

This proviso goes to the root of the matter : good counsel 
warns against the consequences of willful passion : it is the un- 
palatable hellebore that is the best corrective of this species of 
insanity. But in this tragedy it is analogous with the " form " 
of a horoscope, which sets forth the causes that will draw on cer- 
tain results. 

In Borneo's case the cause is deeply hidden, and the necessity 
of discovering it in order to apply a remedy is thus stated : — 

" Btn. My noble uncle, do you : ; ■ ; 
Mo'\. I neither know it, nor can learn of him. 
Ben. Have you importuned him by any means ? 
Mon. Born by myself and many other friends : 
But he, his own affections' course." 
Is to himself — I will not say how true — 
But to himself so secret and so close, 
So far from sounding and discovery 
As is the bud bit by the envious worm 
Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air, 
Or dedicate I :: the sun. 

learn from whence his sorrows grow, 
We would as i. five cure as know.* 

Act I. Se. 1. 

But to gain a knowledge of the cause by examining into all 

tne tea ad influences of the circumstances of an event. 

and then prejudge the consequences, is identical with that species 

of Divination which Bacon classifies as •• Artificial Divination 

that makes prediction by argument from causes." and this applied 

practical life is pru from which we can see with what 

nuity a parallel is found between one of the commonest rules 






ROMEO AND JULIET. 529 

of conduct and a horoscope, which for poetic and artistic pur- 
poses is made the law of the piece, and how intimately this idea 
is wrought into its structure. 

Another passage that animadverts upon conduct which, being 
at variance with custom, is indicative of unsoundness or " dis- 
temperature " of mind, or of body, or of both, is the address of 
Friar Laurence to Romeo, who has visited his cell at an unwont- 
edly early hour. 

"Young son, it argues a distempered head 
So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed : 
Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye, 
And, where care lodgeth, sleep will never lie ; 
But where unbruised youth with unstufft brain 
Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign ; 
Therefore thy earliness doth me assure 
Thou art uprous'd by some distemperature ; 
Or, if not so, then here / hit it right, 
Our Romeo hath not been in bed to-night" etc. 

Act II. Sc. 3. 

The fitness that is attributed to the hours from their favorable 
or unfavorable aspects for special actions is extended also to 
times more general ; for night, day, morning, evening, midnight, 
noon, even light, darkness, heat, cold, and other phases of exter- 
nal nature (all of which enter into Mundane or Atmospheric 
Astrology, and form part of what Bacon calls " Sane Astrology," 
and are matter for a horoscope), have such a special influence 
that makes them serviceable for some purposes rather than for 
others. The same is true, in some measure, of the days of the 
week, and the salutations of " good morrow " (morning) and 
" good den " (evening), which are so numerous in the play, are 
wishes that these times may be propitious. 

This environment of manners and customs, and the impress it 
makes upon the minds of the persons of the piece, occasion the 
many familiar allusions which they let fall to dining, supping, 
bedtime, devotions, and the like customary incidents of daily life, 
both as regulative of actions, or, what is perhaps more frequent, 
as marking somewhat that is untimely, too early, too late, eta 

The mode in which the "form " shapes the action of the piece 

(and as the "form" in this play appertains to time, the time of 

the action is determined by it) is conspicuous in the fact that 

every scene or nearly every scene brings up the eon side ration of 

34 



530 ROMEO AST) JULIET. 

the time or hour or period of life with reference to its fitness 
for some special use ; as. to instance some of them. Lady Capulet 
and the Nurse I Act 1. Sc 3) discuss the seasonableness of Ju- 
liet's age for niarriagr. 

" La. Cap. Thou know'st mv daughrer 's of a pretty age. 
JV. --'. "Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour. 
La. Cap. She's not fourieri. 
Nurse, 1 11 lay fourteen :: irv teeth 
(And yet tc i^y teen be it spoken I have but four), 
She - not fourteen. Hovr long is it now 
To Lammas-:: 



Younger :han you 
Here in Verona, ladi-s :: r^T:m 

made already mot': my count 

I ^: ; dm :"zer much upon these years 
That you are now etf 

The same topic is a subject of conversation between old Cap- 
ulet and Paris (Act I. Sc, 2 | : — 

•• Pa ■'-. Bat now, my lord, what say you to my suit ? 
Cap. But saying o'er whar I have said before : 
My child is yc ngertf the world, 

^_ - : : seen the change of fourteen years : 

Let two more summers wither in their pride, 

her ripe to be a bride," etc. 

A negative instance is that : Id Capulet's reminding his 

cousin at the ball | Ac: L Sc. 5) of the unfitness of their ages 
for masking and dancing : — 

" ' N iy, sit, nay, set, good cousin Capule: 

For you and I are pa,<t our dancing days : 
, since last yourself and I 
re in a mas 

By*i lady, irty years. 
1 '- • ! 'tis not ; : much, '; :- not so much : 

Tb :io, 

Come Pea will. 

S me five-ana- : and then we rnask'd/' etc. 

Friar Lauren - EL Sc 3) goes out before sunrise 

the planetary hour. He savs : — 

*• Now • 
The day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry. 
I must up-fill this g e of ours 

:h baleful weeds and precious- juiced flowers." el 



EOMEO AND JULIET. 531 

He also notes the aspect of the hour : — 

" The gray-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night, 
Checkering the eastern clouds with streaks of light," etc. 

Juliet (Act II. Sc. 5) calculates the time of return of the 
Nurse, whom she has sent to Romeo ; and comments also on the 
unfitness of the Nurse's time of life for acting as a love-messen- 
ger. 

" The clock struck nine, when I did send the Nurse : 
In half an hour she promis'd to return. 



Now is the sun upon the highmost hill 

Of this day's journey • and from nine till twelve 

Is three long hours, — yet she is not come. 

Had she affections and warm youthful blood, 

She ? d be as swift in motion as a ball. 

But old folks, many feign as they were dead ; 

Unwieldy, slow, heavy, and pale as lead." 

In Act III. Sc. 1, heat is considered in its astrological phase as 
influencing the tempers of men. Benvolio begs Mercutio to retire 
from the street ; as, — 

" The day is hot, the Capulets are abroad, 
And, if we meet, we shall not 'scape a brawl : 
For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring," etc. 

This is a true augury, and is verified immediately afterwards. 
Mercutio banters Benvolio (a pattern of prudence) by attributing 
to him his own quarrelsome disposition, and predicts his own fate 
in these words : — 

" Nay, an there were two such, we should have none shortly, for one would 
kill the other." 

This is followed by his combat with Tybalt, which he provokes, 
and in which he is killed. 

Act- III. Sc. 2 : Juliet's soliloquy and invocation to night to 
hasten her coming, as being the time fittest for the meeting of 
lovers. 

Act III. Sc. 4 : Capulet and Paris fix on the properest day for 
the marriage of the latter to Juliet : — 

" Wife, go you tocher ere you go to bed : 
Acquaint her here of my son Paris' love ; 
And bid her, mark you me, on Wednesday next, — 
But soft, what day is this ? 
Paris. Monday, my lord. 






532 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

Cap. Monday ! ha, ha ! Well, Wednesday is too soon, 
0' Thursday let it be ; — o' Thursday, tell her, 
She shall be married to this noble earl," etc. 

Act III. Sc. 5 : Romeo and Juliet contend whether it is the 
lark or the nightingale that sings, that is, whether it is night 
morning, and a time fitter for Roineo to stay or go. 

And so on throughout the scenes generally the time is specified 
in one mode or another. In Act IV. Sc. 4, it is done in this 
phraseology : — 

" Cap. Come, stir, stir, stir ! The second cock hath crow'd. 
The cur-few bell hath rung, J t is three o'clock," — 

where it would appear that the poet presses the curfew into his 
service at a rather unusual hour for its ringing. It serves a 
double purpose, however, for it is an instance, also, of the influ 
ence of sound. 

As the particular employment of the hours gives rise to cus 
toms, so the different periods of life, in its broader divisions, have 
certain fitnesses occasioning special customs in the uses of time, 
as youth is fit for love and pleasure, and age for gravity and 
wisdom ; and out of the mutual relations of these two periods 
there grow, by operation of natural law, suitable manners and 
morals, such as reverence of youth for age, and docility to its 
counsels, obedience of children to parents, and, on the other hand, 
kind and considerate guidance and instruction of youth by age, 
of which apt and seasonable conduct, insubordination on the one 
side and tyranny on the other are violations, from which it is not 
difficult to cast a horoscope with respect to them, for they are 
sure to bring consequences often of the most deplorable nature, — 
youth running wild and perishing through its own excesses, while 
the harsh exercise of authority by age is met by fraud and su 
terfuge, which, in most cases, draw after them the bitter pena 
ties of sorrow and shame. 

In the physical world an action has its consequences in a series 
of efficient causes, linked each to each, as is often exemplified b; 
the action of billiard-balls, of which the first impels the secon 
the second the third, and so on. 

But in the moral world the outward action, which physical! 
may have no causal connection whatever with that which prompts 
it, is but the sign and show of the inward motive, and this, as ii 



Lie 

es 
3y 

: 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 533 

is good or bad, has its consequences in the mode in which it 
affects others in their sentiments of approval or disapproval, 
their love or hate, their desire to reward or punish. These re- 
actions are the working of that justice that preserves the equi- 
librium of the universe by causing every irregularity or disturb- 
ance to be corrected by its consequences. The perception of 
these reactions enables men to make a moral forecast, and calcu- 
late the effects of any meditated action. 

As a proof of the extreme care with which this artist shapes 
the most unessential parts of his dialogue by " the form," may. 
be noticed an instance of a consequence resulting from a physical 
cause, which the Nurse gives in a prediction to old Capulet, who, 
in his eagerness to speed the preparations for Juliet's wedding, 
purposes to sit up all night. 

" Go, [she says,] you cot-quean, go. 
Get you to bed : faith, you HI be sick tomorrow 
For this night's watching" 

If an instance, however, of a more serious nature is needed 
(and the play is full of them), Romeo's last words, after he has 
drunk the poison, may be cited : — 

" O true apothecary, 
Thy drugs are quick" 

Of consequences from moral causes, there may be taken, as an 
instance, the Friar's warning to Romeo, who, after his banish- 
ment, refuses to listen to any advice or take any consideration of 
the future. 

" A pack of blessings lights upon thy back ; 
Happiness courts thee in her best array ; 
But, like a misbehav'd and sullen wench, 
Thou poutest at thy fortune and thy love : 
Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable" 

So uniform is the connection of moral cause and effect that the 
horoscopes that are cast of causes in the moral world are sure of 
being verified by results, provided the observation of the aspects 
of things be accurately made, and the true causes of conduct dis- 
covered ; but in this lies the difficulty, for the aspects, that is, 
the sights and sounds of this world of eye and ear, and especially 
the looks, actions, and words of human beings, are to the last 
degree ambiguous as expressive of their real motives ; and before 
we can use them as causes to trace effects, it is indispensable that 



534 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

we should ascertain their true natures. It is through the mis 
conceptions by the different characters of the causes of promi- 
nent actions and incidents that the misadventures and disasters 
that befall them occur; Tybalt mistakes Borneo's motives in being 
at the ball ; Mercutio mistakes Borneo's feelings in declining the 
challenge of Tybalt ; old Capulet utterly misconceives the cause 
of Juliet's tears ; each of these is a fatal mistake that hurries the 
action of the play forward to its catastrophe. 

But the investigation of natures and causes is the work of phi- 
losophy, — and these plays seem always to get round to tha 
point, — and consequently the observation of the hour, or of th 
events of the hour, perfectly made, is the same in kind if not in 
degree with the investigations of the man of science. As an 
eminent philosopher has said, " It is evident that the ultimate 
object which the philosopher aims at in his researches is precisely 
the same with that which every man of plain understanding, how- 
ever uneducated, has in view when he remarks the events which 
fall under his observation in order to obtain rules for the future 
regulation of his conduct. 1 

The " observation of the hour," then, is identical, as has been 
said, with Bacon's Artificial Divination that predicts from cause 
to effect ; it is the work of reason free from all the idealizing in- 
fluences of imagination and passion and deducing consequences 
from the study of phenomena ; it is the fruit of full deliberation 
before action, and precludes that haste and precipitancy which 
arise from the predominance of some powerful desire over the 
will : it therefore argues a balance of mind and perfect temper 
which admit of no extremes, but in which all constituent qualities 
hold an exact mean, and leave an undisputed sway to the reason. 
All extremity and excess disturb the equilibrium of nature, with- 
out which there can be neither order nor peace, and the recoil and 
punishment are inevitable. 

This doctrine prevails throughout the Shakespearian drama 
and is very strongly presented in this piece. Even the humai 
lawgiver cannot himself escape if he, perchance, hold not th 
scales justly. Mercy, that tolerates wrong, must itself share in 
the penalty. Thus Prince Escalus, who to justify his sentence of 
banishment on Borneo had said, — 

"Mercy but murders, pardoning those who kill," — 
1 Stewart's El of Phil Part III. ch. iv. § 1. 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 535 

afterwards when standing with Montague and Capulet before the 
dead bodies of their children, — the fearful outcome of their hate, 
— admits that his own leniency in dealing with their feuds had 
involved him, the representative of the law, in the punishment. 

" Where be these enemies ? Capulet ! Montague ! 
See what a scourge is laid upon your hate, 
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love ! 
And 1 9 for winking at your discords too. 
Have lost a brace of kinsmen : — all are punisWd." 

Act V. Sc. 3. 

The man of perfect temper, in whose nature are mingled oppo- 
site qualities in such proportions as to prevent the undue predomi- 
nance of any, is self -governed ; he knows the proper use of things 
and the consequences of excess and uses without abusing all his 
appetites, desires, affections, and faculties ; in other words, he is 
wise through a knowledge of causes, and is the ideal and standard 
of judgment with respect to the characters of this piece. 

• Self-restraint and docility of will, which always adorn the char- 
acter that possesses them, are in this play termed " grace," which 
term in the Shakespearian usage has a wide significancy of moral 
beauty, as applied to character and manners. The doctrine of 
moderation and the proper use of things is set forth in the play 
in a didactic passage much more openly than is at all usual in the 
Shakespearian drama, for the doctrinal morality of these plays, 
like their philosophy and science, is almost always hidden behind 
the vividness of the life and action represented. In a soliloquy 
of Friar Laurence, a parallel is run between the properties of 
plants and men, which teaches that even virtue becomes vice 
unless so tempered as to be held in check from excess. 

" O, mickle is the powerful grace, that lies 
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities : 
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live, 
But to the earth some special good doth give ; 
Nor aught so good, but, strain'd from that fair use, 
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse : 
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied ; 
And vice sometimes 's by action dignified. 
Within the infant rind of this small flower 
Poison hath residence and med'cine power: 
For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part ; 
Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart. 
Two such opposed foes encamp them still 



536 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

In roan as well as herbs. — grace and rude will • 

And, where the worser is predominant, 

Full soon the canker death eats up that plant." 

Act II. Sc. 3. 

There is no step in life requiring more careful consideration of 
the consequences than marriage. It is a step about which youth 
most needs counsel, and is least willing to take it. In Latin coun- 
tries marriage is subject to a rigorous custom, which endows the 
parents with the right of managing the marriage of the children, 
and it is claimed for the custom that experience shows that it is 
wiser to rest the security of the future rather on settlements and 
jointures than on the affection of the married couple. On this 
account, marriage contracts in these countries are made by the 
parents and not by the young people, who are supposed to be 
readv to acquiesce in whatever arrangement their friends make 
for them. In such a matter it is plain that both parent and child 
have rights, and it is by no means always easy to draw an exact 
line between them. Due and fair consideration should be given 
to remonstrances on both sides. The best laid schemes of the 
parent are often marred by willfulness of children, while the 
tyranny of parents is met by deception and stratagem, often of 
the most desperate nature : and to this does the unseasonable 
violence of old Capulet drive his daughter Juliet. 

Custom, originating in the observance of times and forming the 
morals and manners of Society, receives a representation in the 
social life of the Verona of this piece, a city where the lives of 
the citizens under the gentle sway of Prince Escalus have fallen 
into so tranquil a routine that even their weapons have become 
cankered with rust through long disuse. This fixity of custom is 
made the background of a picture filled with the sudden turns and 
violent vicissitudes of fortune. The habitual peace of the town is 
broken by a sudden outburst of the feuds of the Montagues and 
Capulets. which fills the streets with brawl and bloodshed, and 
make 

" Verona's ancient citizens 
Cast by their grave beseeming ornaments 
To wield old partisans, in hands as old, 
Cankerd with peace, to part their canker'd hate.'' 

This infraction of the public peace calls out the Prince, who 
threatens death as a consequence to any who shall again offend. 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 537 

The domestic peace, moreover, of both the hostile " houses " is 
jeoparded by a gross breach of custom on the part of Romeo 
and Juliet, the respective representatives of their families, by a 
clandestine marriage. They both rush forward to the gratification 
of their desires without attempting to place the slightest check 
upon the ardor of their passion. But the play- writer evidently 
intends that they shall carry our sympathies with them, while, 
yet, he makes no compromise with their errors ; he consequently 
takes pains to provide for our condoning their utter disregard of 
consequences by depicting them under the influence of an irre- 
sistible passion, which binds them, as it were, by witchcraft, and 
which takes possession of them before they know or can know of 
any reason why it should not be indulged : when they discover 
that they are hereditary enemies, they are startled and alarmed 
as if they had fallen unawares into a great peril ; they are con- 
scious in their hearts that the hostile aspect of their houses sheds 
a baleful influence on their union, but when they learn this it is 
too late, and their love is inextricably intertwined with the fierce 
hates of their families, which, in connection with their immaturity 
and inexperience, thwart all their efforts to reach a happy issue ; 
they are driven to desperation and die by their own hands. 

The predominance of certain desires and humors in the tem- 
perament, which causes so great a variety of dispositions in the 
world, was attributed by astrology to the influence of the stars in 
the ascendant at the time of nativity, which infused a predomi- 
nance of some particular quality in the child then born. This 
was a popular belief, and was alluded to by Bacon, who, treating 
of the natures of men, remarks : — 

" In the traditions of astrology men's natures and dispositions 
are not unaptly distinguished according to the predominances of 
the planets ; for some are naturally formed for contemplation, 
others for business, others for war, others for advancement of for- 
tune, others for love, others for the arts, others for a varied kind 
of life," etc. De Aug. Book VII. ch. iii. 

Of those formed for love Romeo is a notable example. His 
character stands high with those who know him ; oven his pro- 
fessed enemy, old Capulet, says : — 

" Verona brags of hiin 
To be a virtuous and wdl-yocerned youth." 

This, in one respect, is a mistaken judgment, for Romeo is 



/ 



538 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

especially liable to allow his emotions to run into excess ; but as 
he is honorable, refined, and unstained by any coarse vice, he no 
doubt in his outward deportment justifies Capulet's good opinion. 
He possesses, moreover, an active mind and ready wit, through 
which he can be gay and companionable when he forces himself 
to it ; but naturally he is prone to melancholy and foreboding : 
he seems averse to reflection and made for passion alone. With 
an acute sensibility and excitable imagination he also feels a crav- 
ing of the heart and a yearning for sympathy ; he is a lover by 
nature, and having met Rosaline, a proud, cold beauty, who re- 
fuses totally to listen to his suit, he uses her as a lay figure, as it 
were, on which to hang the drapery of his imagination and senti- 
ment, and thus construct an ideal, of which the beauty excites 
his admiration and the cruelty his groans. This enables him to 
fancy himself the most miserable of men. But both his love and 
his sorrow are factitious, as can be seen in the activity of his 
fancy in the invention of far-fetched conceits and quibbles with 
which he expresses the extremity of his woe. There is not a 
single genuine note of simple feeling in all that he says ; it is an 
effort of the mind to keep up a particular style, out of which, 
nevertheless, he is constantly dropping into a natural tone, when- 
ever any little incident calls off his attention. He says to Ben- 
volio, who asks : — 

" Why, Romeo, are you mad ? 
Rom. Not mad, but bound more than a madman is ; 
Shut up in prison, kept without my food, 
Whipp'd and tormented — Good e'en, good fellow." 

[ To servant who enters. 

And again he says : — 

" Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still, 
Should without eyes find pathways to his will. 
Where shall we dine ? " 

The well-balanced Benvolio, in a good-natured and friendly 
way, rebukes Borneo for his infatuation in giving up his judgment 
entirely to his imagination, and assures him that if he would 
" examine other beauties " he would cease to idealize Rosaline, 
and would rid himself of the grief he experiences on account of 
her cruelty. But Romeo stands fast to his ideal. 

The following is their conversation, which, as it strongly marks 
Romeo's disposition and subjection to his imagination, is put in 









ROMEO AND JULIET. 539 

rhymes, some of them alternate, a special style which calls atten- 
tion to its matter. Benvolio says : — 

" At this same ancient feast of Capulet's 
Sups the fair Rosaline, whom thou so lov'st, 
With all the admired beauties of Verona : 
Go thither, and, with unattainted eye, 
Compare her face with some that I shall shoiv, 
And I will make thee think thy swan a crow. 
Rom. When the devout religion of mine eye 
Maintains such falsehoods, then turn tears to fires. 
And these, who, often drown'd, could never die, 
Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars. 
One fairer than my love ! the all-seeing sun 
Ne'er saw her match, since first the world begun. 
Ben. Tut, tut ! you saw her fair, none else being by, 
Herself pois'd with herself, in either eye ; 
But in those crystal scales, let there be weighed 
Your lady's love against some other maid 
That I will shew you, shining at this feast, 
And she shall shew scant well, that now shews best. 
Rom. I '11 go along, no such sight to be shown ; 
But to rejoice in splendour of mine own." 

Act I. Sc. 2. 

In acting his part Romeo spares no pains, and no doubt con- 
siders himself utterly wretched ; but his love requires artificial stim- 
ulus. In a passage already quoted, we have seen that he passes 
the night in the solitary forest in tears and groans, and when day 
returns he locks himself in a dark chamber, where he may nurse 
his sorrow ; not that he is insincere, but self -deceived, a victim 
of his temperament and imagination. 

Romeo's want of mental balance and his consequent haste in 
matters affecting his feelings appear in his words to Friar Lau- 
rence, whose assent he has just obtained to marry him to Juliet, — 

" O let us hence : / stand on sudden haste," — 

to which the Friar subjoins the true rule, — 

" Wisely and slow • they stumble that run fast." 

With all Romeo's brilliant and lovable qualities, he has obvious 
defects of temper and judgment, growing out of his emotional 
nature, owing to which he becomes rash, impatient of advice, and 
in the end so desperate and reckless of consequences that for a 
time he is a gwm-madnuin. 




540 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

Romeo is not only an idealist, he is also a fatalist ; he has a 
deep inherent conviction that the stars in their courses fight 
against him ; that he is born to sorrow and an untimely end. He 
says, with a seeming resignation to the will of Heaven : — 
" He, that hath the steerage of my course, 
Direct my sail." 

But as he exerts neither will nor judgment in the choice of a 
prudent course, this is simply saying that he trusts himself to the 
current of events. Young and inexperienced as he is, he may, 
while indulging his hopeless passion, be pardoned for imagining 
himself utterly miserable, although the effort it costs him to invent 
ingenious reasons to prove love a tyrant, and himself a victim, is 
conclusive that his woe is both superficial and artificial ; but at 
other times he has profound misgivings and real presentiments 
that impart to his soul something of prophetic power, as when, 
yielding to the entreaties of his friends, he consents, against his 
better judgment, to visit the ball at the Capulet mansion ; al- 
though to enter this house may well give him forebodings, for he 
does it at the risk of his life, and, in fact, is only saved by. a 
passing mood of good humor and hospitality, on the part of the 
hot-headed old Capulet. Romeo says : — 

" My mind misgives 
Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars, 
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date 
With this nighfs revels ; and expire the term 
Of a despised life, clos'd in my breast 
By some vile forfeit of untimely death." 

This is such a foreboding as is classed by Bacon as Natural 
Divination, or "a presage from an inward presentiment of the 
mind ; " and is an excellent and apt illustration of that doctrine. 

At the first sight of Juliet, Romeo discovers that in worship- 
ing Rosaline he has been burning incense to a false ideal. He 
is enraptured with Juliet's beauty, and exclaims with genuine 
emotion : — 

" O she doth teach the torches to burn bright ! 
Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night 
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear : 
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear ! " etc. 

Here are no quips nor quibbles ; his words are straight to the 
point and glow with feeling, and he adds : — 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 541 

" Did ray heart love till now ? Forswear it, sight ! 
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night." 

Act I. Sc. 5. 

This is an unquestionable example of an " immateriate virtue," 
or the power of " the rays of things " to move the feelings. 

An equally sudden passion springs up in Juliet towards him. 
He seeks her side, and, with a graceful and reverent courtesy, 
begs — a kiss ; which, with mingled archness and demureness, 
is accorded. From the first glance, they look into each other's 
minds and understand each other's feelings ; but at this first 
meeting, they have never before seen or heard of each other ; they 
are total strangers, neither of them knowing the name, family, 
condition, or disposition of the other. In such a case of sudden 
and mutual attraction, there can be no admiration of character, 
no intellectual sympathy, no moral element whatever ; it is a mat- 
ter wholly of the eye, and the force of physical beauty to influence 
the imagination and feelings ; it is an instance of magnetic 
attraction ; they fascinate each other, or, as the chorus puts it, 
they are " alike bewitched by the charm ofloohs" and both are 
ready to overleap all law and custom that may stand in the way 
of their marriage and union : both, moreover, are idealists, first, 
by nature, and then doubly so by passion; and being endowed 
with quick sensibilities and vivid imaginations they exalt each 
other's perfections to the highest pitch, though the models they 
create in their minds are almost exclusively sensuous, in which 
the only moral excellence that finds a place is truth and fidelity 
to pledges. To Romeo, Juliet's cheek and eyes shame the bright- 
ness of the stars, and if they were placed in heaven, he says, her 
eyes 

" Would through the airy region stream so bright 

That birds would sing and think it were not night ; " — 

and he envies even the fly, that can seize 

" On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand, 
And steal immortal blessings from her lips," — 

while to Juliet, Romeo is " a mortal paradise of sweet flesh ; " 
" a day in night ; " and if he were cut out in little stars he would 

" Make the face of heaven so fine, 
That all the world would be in love with night, 
And pay no worship to the garish sun." 



od: 



542 EOMEO AND JULIET. 

Their love, in short, is a matter of temperament and the blood ; 
but they are young, beautiful, true, and pure-minded ; and they 
idealize their intense and burning passion, and lift it into the 
sphere of delicacy and tenderness of sentiment and beautify it with 
the most exquisite hyperboles of poetry. They meet at the Friar's 
cell for the purpose of marriage, and pour out their ardor in 
words that seem to sweeten the air they are spoken in, but are 
interrupted by the Friar, who is evidently not without experience 
in such matters, and who exclaims : — 

" Come, come with me and we will make short work, 
For, by your leaves, you shall not stay alone 
Till holy church incorporate two in one." 

That which throws a special interest over the lovers is their 
own misgiving that their passion must lead to a fatal result. 
Although of marriageable years, they are very young ; they are not 
yet emerged from adolescence, but are still in tutelage, Juliet 
being but fourteen, and Romeo (according to the old story) but 
twenty ; and it is noteworthy that the dramatist has reduced the 
sixteen years given to Juliet by Brooke's poem (on which the 
play is founded) to the more immature fourteen years of the play. 
The poet seems clearly to have wished to impress us with the in- 
experience of these young people, and the need they have of 
advice and counsel. They are in a measure relieved from moral 
responsibility by being represented as innocent sacrifices to the 
hate of " the houses." Their passion springs up so suddenly 
that they have no time for reflection, and although they are 
aware that they are taking a step most repugnant to the feelings 
of parents and friends, yet they can make no resistance, but only 
utter the deep premonition they each feel that it will be fatal. 
Romeo, when told that the maiden whose beauty had so entranced 
him was the sole daughter of Capulet, the bitter enemy of his 
family, says : — 

"Is she a Capulet ? 
O dear account ! my life is my foe's debt! " 

And Juliet, who had previously whispered to her heart the 
fear, — 

" If he be married 
My grave is like to be my wedding bed," — 

is, upon hearing the truth, dismayed at the perilous relations that 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 543 

must grow out of a love so antagonized by hate, and utters a deep 
misgiving : — 

" My only love sprung from my only hate ! 
Too early seen unknown and known too late ! 
Prodigious birth of love it is to me, 
That I must love a loathed enemy.'' 9 + 

It is the doctrine of this piece that before action we should 
endeavor to foresee the consequences of our course. This can be 
done only with any confidence by " Artificial Divination," or rea- 
soning from causes to effects. This prudence Romeo is remark- 
ably deficient in, not through a want of ability to reason, but 
because he is swept away by a tide of passion that does not per- 
mit him to question what may follow ; he has, however, a natural 
divination through w T hich the forebodings of his mind hit cor- 
rectly, though vaguely, on results ; as in the deep apprehension 
he feels on entering the Capulet mansion, which is not through 
any feeling of personal peril, but because he has a prescience that 
the step will be followed by some fearful mishap. Of a like 
nature is the feeling which, as he is walking by the Capulet gar- 
den after the ball, leads him to say, — 

" Can I go forward when my heart is here ? 
Turn back, dull earth, and find thy centre out," — 

and leaps the garden wall in order to find, if possible, an oppor- 
tunity of speaking with Juliet. 

It may be noted that the metaphor which Romeo here uses is 
taken from that class (the fourth above mentioned) of " imma- 
teriate virtues," in which the attraction of the earth is placed, 
such attraction being supposed to reside in its centre. 

Romeo is fortunate in finding Juliet on her balcony, and, hav- 
ing obtained from her a confession that she reciprocates his love, 
he hastens away to Friar Laurence in order to persuade him to 
perform a secret marriage. The good priest, in the hope of recon- 
ciling the warring factions represented by the lovers, consents and 
invokes the favorable aspect of the heavens in order that the con- 
sequences may prove fortunate. 

" So smile the heavens upon this holy act, 
That after hours with sorrow chide us not.'' 

Whereat Romeo's impatient passion breaks forth with this M ex- 
tremity " of thought and feeling : — 



544 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

" Amen, amen ! but come what sorrow can, 
It cannot countervail the exchange of joy 
That one short minute gives me in her sight : 
Do thou but close our hands with holy words, 
Then love-devouring death do what he dare, 
It is enough I may but call her mine." 

At this extravagance the Friar raises his voice of warning : — 

" These violent delights have violent ends 
And in their triumph die ; like fire and powder, 
Which, as they kiss, consume. . . . 
Therefore, love moderately ; long love doth so ; 
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow." 

After his banishment for killing Tybalt — the Prince having 
commuted the sentence of death to exile, which latter is by no 
means an irremediable evil — Romeo takes refuge in Friar Lau- 
rence's cell and literally abandons himself to despair. Instead of 
seeing a mercy in the milder punishment, he considers it a torture 
worse than death ; it separates him from Juliet and he refuses to 
be comforted. He says : — 

" Heaven is here 
Where Juliet lives ; and every cat and dog 
And little mouse, every unworthy thing, 
Live here in heaven and may look on her ; 
But Romeo may not." 

Act III. Sc. 3. 

Life without her presence is simply intolerable ; it is " purga- 
tory, torture, hell itself." Overwhelmed with the word " banish- 
ment," he rejects all advice. The Friar tells him, — 

" I '11 give thee armour to keep off that word ; 
Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy, 
To comfort thee, though thou art banished ; " — 

that is, he will coolly look at the case and calculate the many 
encouraging chances of the future, but Romeo lives only in the 
present ; his passion knows no future and spurns philosophy. 

" Hang up philosophy ! 
Unless philosophy can make a Juliet, 
Displant a town, reverse a prince's doom, 
It helps not, it prevails not, talk no more." 

And he throws himself upon the ground, where deaf to entreaties 
and heedless alike of his own safety and that of his confessor, 
whose welfare he is endangering, he refuses to arise, until hearing 



KOMEO AND JULIET. 545 

from the Nurse, who enters, — and who rebukes him for his want 
of manliness, — the piteous plight of Juliet, he springs up, and 
drawing his sword, is about to commit suicide when the Friar 
seizes his hand, and, dropping his tone of kindness and pity, de- 

Inounces in the severest terms his want of sense and fortitude. 
" Hold thy desperate hand : 
Art thou a man ? thy form cries out thou art ; 
Thy tears are womanish ; thy wild acts denote 
The unreasonable fury of a beast: 
Unseemly woman in a seeming man ! 
An ill-beseeming beast in seeming both ! 
Thou hast amaz'd me : by my holy order, 
I thought thy disposition better tempered ;" — 

and then goes on to point out to him the many reasons he has for 
self-congratulation, and for supposing his banishment will be of 
short duration. 

The tone of the Friar towards Romeo is that of an experienced 
preceptor towards a pupil — he calls Romeo his "pupil" — whom 
he loves, whose misery he pities, whose inexperience he pardons, 
and whose errors he seeks to correct, all the more for the many 
noble qualities that go with them. Romeo and Juliet are not 
adults who are expected to think and act for themselves ; they 
are young persons, whose passions are more mature than their 
judgments, and who, through immoderate desire, anticipate the 
period of free action. 

After Romeo hears of Juliet's death he stays not to ponder the 

event ; it does not surprise him ; his forebodings have whispered 

it to him ; " the day 's black fate " he has so long anticipated has 

arrived, and nothing can touch him further. He simply says : — 

" Is it even so : then / defy you, stars ! " 

The occasion gives him concentration, purpose, dignity ; and 
he rises to that stature of manhood of which he had previously 
fallen so far short. He at once seeks for the means of sudden 

death, — 

" Such soon-speeding gear 
That the life-weary taker may fall dead ; " — 

and he recalls a prophetic suggestion, which the sight of a certain 
needy apothecary had awakened in his mind and of whom he had 
thought, — 

" An if a man did need a poison now, 
Here lives the caitiJV wretch will Bell it him." 
35 



I 



/ 



546 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

With this poison procured he hurries to Verona ; he stops not 
to obtain further information, he seeks no interview with the 
Friar, but presses forward to the end with the most desperate 
haste, slaving Paris, who crosses him at the tomb : and after 
breaking open the sepulchre and taking a farewell embrace, and 
a last look at Juliet's beauty, which even in death makes to his 
eyes the dim "vault a feasting-presence full of light." he drinks 
off the poison with a precipitancy which alone prevents his dis- 
covering the true state of the facts from the Friar, who immedi- 
ately after enters. Throughout, the character is marked by a 
haste and impatience due to the predominance in his disposition 
of passion and willfulness over reason, which latter requires that 
we should carefully look into the causes of the events taking 
place around us in order that we may trace their probable effects. 
This course, this "observation of the hour." which is the same as 
the " artificial divination " of Bacon, and which, as we have seen, 
is the rule of the play, enables one to forecast the future on 
rational grounds : but this moderation does not belong to Romeo, 
whose career verifies the wisdom of the Friar's words : — 

' ; Two such opposed foes encamp tkein still 
In man as well as herbs. — grace and rude will : 
And,, where the worser is predominant. 
Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.'' 

Juliet has been educated in the belief that the marriage of a 
daughter is properly managed by the parent, and on her first in- 
troduction she is ready to accept as a suitor whomsoever her 
father shall select. At this time, she is perfectly fancy-free ; 
marriage is " an honor she has dreamed not of." She is filial, 
obedient, respectful, and leans, child-like, on the older ones around 
her. particularly the Nurse, for advice and instruction. To the 
proposition that she accept the County Paris as a husband and 
also to her mother's high-flown and figurative eulogy of his beauty 
and merits, she modestly replies, — 

u I '11 look to like, if looking liking move, 
But no more deep will I endart mine eye 
Than your consent gives strength to make it fly." 

Nothing can be more dutiful ; but when she doubtingiy says, 
k * I 11 look to like, if looking liking move*" she reveals her pro- 
found ignorance of the power of the eye and the aspect over the 
feelings. No sooner does she meet Romeo and exchange glances 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 547 

with him than she is sensible that he is her predestined lover and 
the ruler of her fate. 

With all her sensibility and imagination, Juliet has great bal- 
ance of character; she has will, forethought, and truth; at the 
same time is confiding, passionate, and capable of deep duplicity ; 
yet these opposite qualities are so tempered that no one of them 
overbears the others so far as to rule the character. Docile and 
placing the utmost trust in her counselors, she develops, as soon 
as she finds that her trust is betrayed, a fund of energy and self- 
support that easily exalt her conduct to heroism. 

Her ready use of evasion is set down among the earliest revela- 
tions of her character : the Nurse at the ball overhears Juliet's 
comment on the incongruity of her loving passionately the enemy 
of her house and breaks in upon her with " What 's this ? what 's 
this ? " ■ — an inquiry which Juliet quietly parries with a quick 
evasion, — 

" A rhyme I learn' d e'en now 
Of one I danced withal." 

This latent craft becomes prominently developed in her future 
conduct, but she uses it as a shield to protect herself and not as a 
weapon to injure others. While to her lover she is frank, ingen- 
uous, and removed as far as possible from all coquetry, she prac- 
tices a deep dissimulation towards her parents, who show her no 
kindness, treat her with no sympathy, heed no remonstrance', but 
cruelly and brutally attempt to force upon her a husband against 
her will. 

Juliet has something of Romeo's foreboding ; she has the same 
sense of approaching calamity, but her fears proceed from her 
higher reasoning powers. As ardently passionate as Romeo, she 
is much superior in self-control ; her mind is far better balanced 
than his ; she is willing to take counsel and weigh the circum- 
stances under which she is acting. She intuitively perceives that 
a course so contrary to law and custom as the one she and her 
lover are pursuing must necessarily lead to some untoward issue. 
In the garden scene, immediately after their mutual avowals, she 
says, — 

" Although I joy in thee 

I have no joy of this contract to-night : 

It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden ; 

Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be 

Ere one can say — it lightens. '' 

Act II. Sc. 2. 



. 



548 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

And subsequently at the parting from Eomeo on the morning he 
starts for Mantua, she says, looking down at him from her win- 
dow, — 

" O God ! I have an ill-divining soul j 

Methinks I see thee, now thou art below, 

As one dead in the bottom of a tomb ! 

Either my eye-sight fails or thou look'st pale. 

Rom. And trust me, love, in my eye so do you : 

Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu ! adieu ! " 

This is another instance of Bacon's Natural Divination " that 
forms a presage from an inward presentiment without the help of 
signs." 

It is a presage, too, which is literally fulfilled, for neither of the 
lovers ever after sees the other except as " one dead in the bottom 
of a tomb." 

Juliet's will, moreover, is not so exclusively under the influence 
of passion as his ; she has far more of " grace " than of " rude 
will ; " she will not listen to his vows unless they are ratified by 
marriage, but once she has plighted her troth and become his 
wife, she will walk the whole circle of horrors but that she will 
live " an unstained wife to her sweet lord." 

Her courage and constancy are put to much severer tests than 
any he undergoes. Her hot-headed old father is resolved that she 
shall marry the County Paris and he thus threatens her with the 
consequences of her refusal : — 

" Settle your fine joints 'gainst Thursday next, 
To go with Paris to St. Peter's church, 
Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither : 
Out, you green-sickness carrion ! out, you baggage ! 
You tallow-face ! . . . 
An you will not wed, I '11 ' pardon ' you : 
Graze where thou wilt, you shall not house with me : 
Look to '£, think on h, I do not use to jest : 
Thursday is near : lay hand on heart, advise : 
An you be mine, I '11 give you to my friend ; 
An you be not, hang, beg, starve, die i' the street, 
For by my soul, I '11 ne'er acknowledge thee, 
Nor what is mine shall never do thee good, 
Trust to 't, bethink you, I '11 not be forsworn." 

Act III. Sc. 5. 

This is passion enjoining the practice of philosophy. Capulet 
vents his wrath by forcing on Juliet " the observation of the hour " 
or the consideration of consequences. 



KOMEO AND JULIET. 549 

In her distress, Juliet turns to her mother and appeals to her 
in words of deepest pathos. 

" O sweet my mother, cast me not away ! 
Delay this marriage for a month, a week : 
Or if you do not, make the bridal bed 
In that dim monument where Tybalt lies." 

But this cold and rancorous woman says repulsively, — 

" Talk not to me, for I '11 not speak a word ; 
Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee." 

As a last resort she turns to the Nurse, who is in the secret of 
her marriage, and whose affection has always been to her a refuge 
and a comfort, and says : — 

" O nurse, how shall this be prevented ? 
My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven ; 
How shall that faith return again to earth, 
Unless that husband send it me from heaven 
By leaving earth ? Comfort me, counsel me, — 



What say'st thou ? hast thou not a word of joy ? 
Some comfort, nurse" 

Act III. Sc. 5. 

But neither the moral exigency of the situation nor Juliet's 
truth of soul are within the comprehension of this shallow-minded, 
time-serving creature. And no doubt she is quite sincere in ad- 
vising Juliet to marry the Count on the ground that, Romeo being 
an exile, he is unable to return and challenge her action, while 
such a course will smooth over every difficulty (besides saving her 
own bones for the part she has played in the secret marriage), 
and in order to commend this advice to Juliet's acceptance she 
heartily praises Paris and at the same time disparages Romeo. 
Nothing could be more timely for Juliet's good than this advice ; 
its utter turpitude and the vulgarity and shallowness of mind it 
discloses raise Juliet's intensest scorn, and develop in her a 
strength of soul which converts her from a confiding girl into a 
self-reliant heroine. She now feels perfectly self-assured, for, 
deserted by all others, she knows that she carries the means of 
escape in the dagger which she holds. She is ready to die, but 
first she will seek the Friar to know his remedy. She says : — 

" Go, counsellor ; 
Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain. 
I '11 to the friar to know his remedy ; 
If all else fail, myself have power to die** 



550 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

The Friar, who is anxious that the marriage of the lovers 
should not be made known until an opportune time, proposes tc 
Juliet a plan calculated to test all her nerve and strength of mind. 
It is that of taking a sleeping-draught, under the influence of 
which she will apparently die and be entombed, with the under- 
standing that Romeo will be present at her waking and bear her 
to a place of safety. She assents, but upon taking the draught 
in the solitude of her chamber, both reason and imagination sug- 
gest to her the consequences that may ensue, especially the possi- 
bility of her awaking in the tomb before aid should reach her. 
Her imagination becomes affrighted with the images it conjures 
up, until to her half-frenzied mind the murdered Tybalt starts 
from his shroud, and, sword in hand, seeks Romeo to slay him. 
So powerfully does her imagination act upon her sense that the 
vision of her mind takes corporeal substance and visibility for 
the eye, and she actually sees her cousin, as if living. She 
cries : — 

" look ! meihinlcs I see my cousin's ghost 
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body 
Upon a rapier's point." 

But her love for Romeo and her wish to aid him is a stronger 
impulse than her fears, and she adds : — 

" Stay, Tybalt, stay ! 
Romeo, I come ; this do I drink to thee. 

This is a fine example of Bacon's doctrine of " Fascination " 
in that branch of it that treats of " the power of the imagination 
upon the body of the imaginant." De Aug. Book V. ch. i. and 
iii. 

Juliet's trust is simply infinite. She carries out all her part of 
the Friar's plan with unfaltering constancy, and is only defeated 
of her hopes by the rashness of her lover, and when all else fails 
she has, as she has previously told us, the power to die. Left alone 
in the sepulchre, the Friar having withdrawn, and Romeo lying 
dead at her feet, she espies, by what she considers a happy chance, 
Romeo's dagger, and, seizing it, at once stabs herself, exclaim- 
ing:— 

" O happy dagger ! 
This is thy sheath ; there rust and let me die." 

[Falls on Romeo's body and dies. 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 551 

Whatever be their faults, this youthful couple are certainly- 
noble in the proofs they give of their trust and of their fidelity to 
themselves and to each other, and they die with a heroism and a 
magnanimity which has been the admiration of the world so far 
as to make the legend of their love the most famous, perhaps, of 
any in the long catalogue of the stories of star-crossed lovers. 

The foregoing skeleton -sketch of these characters gives no hint 
of their power and beauty as dramatic and poetic creations ; its 
aim is only to show their relations to the organic law of the piece, 
which, being " the form " of a horoscope, or the observation of 
causes from which to predict consequences, is, as has been pointed 
out, identical with the Artificial Divination of Bacon, or, in other 
words, the exercise of judgment and foresight in the affairs of 
life. In this respect there is a wide difference between these 
lovers : of the two, Juliet is the superior ; her strong reason per- 
ceives distinctly that their course is erroneous and hazardous, but 
the full stream of pleasurable emotion that has, as if by magic, 
commenced its flow in her heart, prevents her listening to any 
misgivings or promptings of prudence ; besides, she acts with the 
sanction of her confessor, while in Romeo there seems to be 
hardly the faculty of forethought, and, indeed, he is so overmas- 
tered by willful passion that he comes near to losing our respect 
and sympathy. But his youth, his sincerity, and his heroic fidel- 
ity to his love win back both admiration and pardon. 

Most of the other characters of the piece are distinguished 
more by personal temperament than by depth of nature. They 
each have some predominant bias in their dispositions. Old Cap- 
ulet, for instance, is a hot-headed, irascible man, arbitrary and 
willful, with quick turns of feeling, and is governed by impulse. 
Like most men of high temper, he has two sides to his character, 
which are almost always in extremes, and strongly contrast with 
one another. When nothing ruffles him he is exceedingly cheer- 
ful and pleasant, but at the least opposition to his will he flies 
into a violent passion, which expends itself in voluble and vulgar 
abuse. In his hospitality he is loud and jovial, though coarse in 
manner. He is entitled, however, to the praise of sincerity ; he 
disguises no feeling, but is simply wrong-headed, and gauges 
everything by a judgment terribly warped by an arbitrary and 
violent nature. His headlong and impatient temper is ludi- 
crously manifested in his rushing in at the noise of the street fray 



552 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

with which the play opens, "in his gown," and without a weapon, 
and then, in the thick of the melee, shouting for his " long sword" 
to be brought him. 

In his reply to Paris, who solicits him for the hand of his 
daughter, Juliet, he is, at first, entirely fair-minded ; he insists 
that Juliet is too young to marry, and advises Paris not to decide 
on marriage until he had compared Juliet with other ladies, and 
urges him to be present at the Capulet feast that night, when he 
could have an opportunity of seeing many " fresh female buds," 
telling him : — 

At my poor house, look to behold this night 
Earth-treading stars, that make dark heaven light. 



Hear all, all see 
And like her most, whose merit most shall be," etc. 

Act I. Sc. 2. 

He expressly tells Paris that he leaves Juliet to her own inde- 
pendent choice. 

" My will to her consent is but a part ; 
An she agree, within her scope of choice 
Lies my consent and fair according voice," etc. 

And yet within a few hours the whim seizes him, and, without 
consulting Juliet, he promises her hand to Paris, and then threat- 
ens her with poverty, starvation, death in the streets, unless she 
marry off-hand at his bidding. ■ 

In making this match, Capulet has some misgivings himself 
whether Juliet will assent. He says : — 

" Sir Paris, I will make a desperate tender 
Of my child's love. / think she ivill be ruVd 
In all respects by me ; nay, more, I doubt it not," etc. 

This doubt renders his subsequent violence all the more unrea- 
sonable, but his conduct makes more probable Juliet's readiness 
to take the sleeping-draught, and excuses in a measure her du- 
plicity. 

Capulet's coarse mind and manners, which are natural to him 
and are relieved occasionally by a vein of courtesy, the result of 
his social position, are in contrast with Montague's. Of the lat- 
ter person we see but little, but that little suffices to show him a 
refined and courtly gentleman. 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 553 

There is a similar contrast between Lady Montague and Lady 
Capulet. The former is so much attached to her son Romeo that 
on his banishment she dies of broken heart ; while Lady Capulet 
exhibits scarce a trace of emotional feeling, except a slight utter- 
ance of grief at Juliet's supposed death ; on the other hand, when 
Juliet makes to her the most piteous supplication that she delay 
the marriage with Paris, this proud and deadly woman — for she 
is familiar with the bowl and the dagger — turns coldly away with 
a most repulsive want of sympathy. 

The part of Mercutio is to laugh at the exaggerations of the 
idealist and unveil the sensual basis of that love that has its 
source in the eye and the witchery of personal beauty. This he 
does in a gay but gross manner. He seems desirous (aside from 
the mere irrepressible ebullience of his mercurial temperament) 
of jeering Romeo out of his nonsense and teaching him that he 
is cheated by his imagination. After a trial between them as to 
whose wit and fancy can longest keep up a jingle of words and 
play of conceits, he says : " Why, is not this better than groaning 
for love ? Now art thou Romeo ? now art thou what thou art by 
art as well as by nature," etc. 

Mercutio is a stout upholder of old customs ; his chief reason 
for disliking Tybalt is that Tybalt fights by book of arithmetic, 
and with his " passado " and " punto " and " reverso," has sought 
to change the good old-fashioned way of fighting when reliance 
was placed solely on quickness of eye and hand. 

He thus laughs at Romeo's idealism : — 

" Now is he for the numbers Petrarch flowed in ; Laura, to his lady, was 
but a kitchen- wench ; — marry, she had a better love to berhyme her ; Dido, 
a dowdy ; Cleopatra, a gipsy ; Helen and Hero, hildings and harlots ; Thisbe, 
a grey eye or so, but not to the purpose," etc. Act II. Sc. 4. 

Tybalt typifies the most virulent partisan hate. He is of a 
martial temperament and savage disposition, a professed duelist, 
fond of combat and distinguished for his skill with the rapier. 
He finds Benvolio endeavoring to suppress a tumult between the 
adherents of the two houses, and at once commences a quarrel. 

" Turn thee, Benvolio, look upon thy death. 

Ben. I do but keep the peace ; put up thy sword 
Or manage it to part these men with me. 
Tyb. What, drawn and talk of peace ! I hate t he* word 
As / hate hell, all Montagues and thee". 



554 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

Tybalt detects Borneo's presence at the Capulet feast by bis 
voice, and the sound moves bis bitterest wrath. 

" Tyb. This by his voice should be a Montague : 
Fetch me my rapier, boy. What ! dares the slave 
Come hither, cover'd with an antick face 
To fleer and scorn at our solemnity ? " etc. 

Tvbalt cannot but suppose that Romeo is there in an unfriendly 
spirit ; but this is a gross misconception of the fact (for Romeo 
is there through his love for Rosaline). This error, which pro- 
ceeds from the ambiguity of sights and sounds and Tybalt's hasty 
conclusion, has most malign consequences, for Tybalt, who is 
about to take summary vengeance, is checked by old Capulet, 
who, having heard Romeo favorably spoken of, and happening 
just then to be in a cheerful mood, absolutely forbids Tvbalt from 
dishonoring the hospitality of his house by molesting Romeo. 
This deepens Tybalt's resentment, and he lays up his hate for an- 
other day. He says : — 

" Patience, perforce with wilful clioler meeting 
Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting. 
I will withdraw ; but this intrusion shall 
Xow seeming sweet, convert to bitter gall" 

These words breathe deliberate hate and revenge ; they fore- 
token a deadly outcome. Immediately after his secret marriage, 
Romeo encounters Tybalt, who openly professes his hate and in- 
sults him with vile epithets, but Romeo, who now looks upon 
Tybalt, Juliet's cousin, as his own kinsman, replies with gentle 
words, and assures him that he tenders the name of Capulet as 
dearly as his own. Mercutio, who is present and who has a strong 
personal dislike of Tybalt, mistaking (in his ignorance of Romeo's 
marriage) his aspect and manner for " a dishonorable, vile sub- 
mission," draws on Tybalt and forces him to fight, as it were, in 
self-defense. Romeo endeavors to come between them in order 
to keep the peace, and through his interference Mercutio receives 
a mortal thrust. He retains, however, his constitutional flow of 
humor, and utters dying words which prove to be a fatal pro- 
phecy, — 

" A plague o' both your houses ! 
They have made worms' meat of me. 
I have it, and soundly, too — your houses ! " 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 555 

Mercutio is led away, and Romeo has hardly time to lament the 
incongruous position in which he is placed betw.een Juliet's love 
and the hatred of her kinsfolk, which subjects him to imputations 
on his honor and courage, exclaiming, — 

" O sweet Juliet 
Thy beauty hath made me effeminate 
And in my temper softened valour's steel " — 

when Benvolio returns and announces the death of Mercutio. 
This brings upon Romeo one of those deep presentiments to which 
his soul is subject, and which so weir illustrate the doctrine of 
Natural Divination. 

" This day's black fate on more days doth depend ; 
This but begins the woe, others must end." 

Tybalt at this juncture returns. The concurrence proves too 
much for Romeo's self-command. Passion is uppermost, and he 
retorts to Tybalt : — 

" Rom. Alive ! in triumph ! and Mercutio slain ! 



Now, Tybalt, take the villain back again 

That late thou gav'st me ; for Mercutio' s soul 

Is but a little way above our heads, 

Staying for thine to keep him company : 

Or thou or I or both must go with him. 

Tyb. Thou wretched boy, that didst consort him here 

Shalt with him thence," etc. [They fight. Tybalt falls. 

Notwithstanding Tybalt's great skill, he is apparently run 
through at the first lunge. Fate guides Romeo's arm, and the 
skillful fencer, in all the flush of vigorous manhood, falls before 
the weapon of a " boy." This is the turning-point in Romeo's 
career ; his life's vista, which had been so bright, is now shrouded 
in a gloom which is never again lifted. The death of Mercutio 
evidently grows out of the antagonism of love and hate produced 
by Romeo's secret marriage. Had Romeo been able to disclose 
to his friends (without endangering Juliet's liberty) the fact that 
he had married her, all the tragic issues that followed had been 
avoided. It is one of the most important links in that nexus of 
facts, that underrun the surface of the play and cause the dif- 
ferent characters to misjudge entirely the true aspect of events as 
they happen, leading in each case to disastrous errors, and show- 
ing how futile and even dangerous it is to decide upon ambiguous 



556 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

sights and sounds unless we take into consideration the concomi- 
tants : a fact which emphasizes the necessity of investigating the 
true nature of things and arriving at their causes before action is 
taken under their influence. 

As the ribaldry of Mercutio heightens by contrast the ideal- 
ism of Romeo, so the vulgarity of the Nurse places in relief the 
refinement of Juliet. The character of the Nurse was taken from 
Brooke's poem, but was greatly altered and modified to make it 
fit well its place in the play. In thought and speech, her manners 
or rather her mannerisms are the product of custom and routine : 
she is stamped with the peculiarities of her calling. Her pet 
names for Juliet, her familiar style with her superiors, her inti- 
mate association with the private affairs of the household, show 
her as an old and confidential retainer, who, through long service, 
has become incorporated, as it were, into the family, by whom, 
notwithstanding her garrulity and ignorance, she is tolerated on 
account of her special and intimate relations with Juliet. She is, 
moreover, obsequious, and commends herself by a low craft and 
flattery, but is utterly without principle or prudence. She lends 
herself without scruple to Juliet's scheme of a clandestine mar- 
riage and to the stolen interviews of the lovers : nor does she 
hesitate, after Romeo's banishment, to advise Juliet to marry Paris 
as an admirable stroke of policy, contending that it may safely be 
done, as Romeo, being an exile, cannot call her to account for her 
action. The utter baseness of such a step never occurs to her. 
Juliet is amazed and breaks out with the passionate exclamation : 

" Ancient damnation ! most wicked fiend ! " — 

but the Nurse herself is too shallow both in thought and feeling 
to comprehend the iniquity of such a course, much less forecast 
its consequences. Her morality and conscience are satisfied if 
appearances are preserved : in other words, she is wholly super- 
ficial and governed by the occasion, while in moments of deeper 
trouble and grief, she invariably finds solace in her cup of aqua 
vitce ; in all which she is apparently a negative of " the form." 

Her views of love and marriage are altogether practical and 
professional, and her remarks on these points may almost vie for 
plainness of speech with those of Mercutio himself. She is the 
prose version of Juliet's romance : and is used, like Mercutio, 
to keep before^the mind the physical basis of that love which 






ROMEO AND JULIET. 557 

originates in the magnetism of beauty. This aesthetic counter- 
balance to the sublimated ecstasies of the lovers appears even 
in the expression of Capulet's grief for Juliet's death and in 
Romeo's last words in her tomb. And it would appear that the 
poet himself, whose insight is never disturbed by the glow of his 
imagination, suggests by his mode of managing his work how 
greatly the lovers exaggerate each other's merits and perfections ; 
seen, as they are, by them through the illusory haze of a romantic 
passion ; yet he lets fall no word that can impeach the singleness 
and purity of their purpose or impair the beauty of their trust 
and devotion, much less detract from the noble self-sacrifice with 
which they throw away their lives for their truth. 

This love, moreover, is typical of one of the cardinal facts of 
human nature, a portrayal of which could not be omitted in a 
drama that treats of the more important phenomena in the phi- 
losophy of Man ; and viewed strictly on moral instead of artistic 
grounds, Uhe subject is seen to be treated with perfect integrity 
and fairness, for while the poet awakens our deepest sympathy 
for the unfortunate lovers, and commends their passion to the 
imagination by the wealth and profusion of beauty and poetry 
with which he surrounds it, he in no way relaxes the severity of 
his judgment with respect to their willfulness and imprudence. 

Friar Laurence may be considered the moral centre of the 
piece, embodying that wisdom, or, in Juliet's phrase, " that long- 
experienced time," which enables its possessor to give counsel in 
the emergencies of life ; and this is his function in the play ; he 
represents "the form" or that counsel that points out the conse- 
quences of a particular line of conduct ; but he has his limita- 
tions, which, as is almost always the case with Shakespeare's 
ideals when embodied in characters, bring him within the imper- 
fections of human nature, and make him dramatic and natural. 
Wise and prudent as he is he is nevertheless baffled in the exe- 
cution of his schemes by the trivial and unforeseen accidents of 
the external world, — a common result in attempts of secret cun- 
ning and imposture, since in such attempts the single human 
mind enters the lists against the world's mass of things. Another 
cause, however, cooperated with external circumstances to over- 
throw his calculations, and that cause lay in the character of 
Romeo himself, whose hasty and unconsidered action was that 
which brought ruin upon himself and upon all he loved and all 
that loved him. 



558 KOMEO AND JULIET. 

In casting a horoscope from observation of the human world 
instead of the heavenly sphere, the aspects of men and women 
and the friendship and enmity they manifest take the place of 
the .irradiations of the stars ; and to objects of sight are added 
also sounds as being of the same class of " immateriate virtues," 
of which the most potential to influence the passions are words, 
especially the names bestowed on objects of love or hatred. An 
obvious instance of a sound to move either love or hate, without 
reference to the real nature of that to which it is applied, is a 
party name, — as Capulet or Montague, — which at once excites 
the animosity of the opposing faction and the good-will of its 
own. 

A sound to move love is the name of the beloved object. As 
Juliet says : — 

" Every tongue that speaks 
But Romeo's name speaks heavenly eloquence." 

The garden scene is famous for its exquisite portrayal of the 
avowals of a mutual passion, and is looked upon as a sort of an 
attar, into which is condensed the sweetness of infinite love con- 
fessions ; but if we examine it we find that much of its power is 
derived from the examples it presents of the influence of sounds 
over the feelings. 

And first we note that Juliet, with her strong sense that tri- 
umphs over partisan feeling, brushes aside the sophistry that 
grows out of the ambiguity of sounds that through the influence 
of a hostile name would excite hate for an object worthy of love. 

" O Romeo, Romeo ! wherefore art thou Romeo f 
Deny thy father and refuse thy name j 
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, 
And / 7Z no longer be a Capulet. 



'T is but thy name that is my enemy. 
Thou art thyself though, not a Montague. 
What 9 s Montague ? it is nor hand nor foot, 
Nor arm nor face, nor any other part. 
What 9 s in a name ? that which we call a rose 
By any other name would smell as sweet ; 
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo calVd, 
Retain that dear perfection which he owes 
Without that title : — Romeo, doff thy name, • 
And for thy name, which is no part of thee, 
Take all myself. 



EOMEO AND JULIET. 559 

Rom. I take thee at thy word ; 

Call me but love and I '11 be new baptised ; 

Henceforth I never will be Romeo. 

Jul. What man art thou, that thus bescreen'd in night, 

So stumbl'st on my counsel ? 

Rom. By a name 

I knovj not how to tell thee who I am ; 

My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself 

Because it is an enemy to thee • 

Had I it written I would tear the word. 

Jul. My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words 

Of that tongue's utterance, yet / know the sound j 

Art thou not Romeo and a Montague ? 

Rom. Neither, fair saint, if either thee dislike," etc. 

After bidding Romeo " good-night," and as he is slowly retir- 
ing, Juliet reenters, and again makes expression of her love by 
the fondness with which she dwells upon Romeo's name. 

"Hist! Romeo, hist! O for a falconer's voice 
To lure this tassel-gentle back again ! 
Bondage is hoarse and may not speak aloud j 
Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies, 
And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine 
With repetition of my Romeo's name. 
Rom. It is my soul that calls upon my name ; 
How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night 
Like softest music to attending ears ! " 

Among sounds that particularly affect the feelings are shrieks 
and cries, which proceed themselves from emotion ; so the shouts 
of angry citizens, as for " clubs, bills, and partisans ! " may be 
noted ; also calls that interrupt some interesting flow of emotion, 
such as the Nurse's call from u within " while Romeo and Juliet 
are taking leave of each other. Another instance, which appears 
purposely marked, is " the knocking " at the door of the Friar's 
cell (Act III. Sc. 3) while the Friar is remonstrating with Romeo 
for his willfulness in not concealing himself. It serves to show 
how far passion has carried him beyond good feeling and good 
sense. 

The most powerful instance, perhaps, in the play of the effect 
of a sound upon the feelings is that of the word "banished" 
upon both Juliet and Romeo. 

Juliet thus descants upon it : — 

" Some word there was worser than Tybalt'* death, 
That murder'd me : I would forget it fain ; 



560 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

But oh ! it presses to my memory 

Like damned guilty deeds to sinners' minds ! 

* Tybalt is dead and Romeo — banished ! ' 

That banished, that one word banished, 

Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts. Tybalt's death 

Was woe enough, if it had ended there : 

But with a rear-ward following Tybalt's death, 

Romeo is banished, — to speak that word 

Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet, 

A 11 slain, all dead : ' Romeo is banished ! ' 

There is no end, no limit, measure, bound, 

In that word's death : no words can that woe sound" 

Act III. Sc. 2. 

Romeo is almost equally emphatic, saying : — 

" O friar, the damned use that word in hell ; 
Holdings attend it : How hast thou the heart, 
Being a divine, a ghostly confessor, 
A sin-absolver and my friend profest, 
To mangle me with that word banishment." 

Act III. Sc. 3. 

Romeo, however, imputes to his own name a force almost 
equally deadly over Juliet. He inquires of her condition of the 
Nurse, who replies, — 

" O she weeps and weeps, 
And now falls on her bed and then starts up 
And Tybalt cries ; and then on Romeo calls, 
And then down falls again. 
Rom. As if that name 

Shot from the deadly level of a gun 
Did murder her." 

Another example of the influence of sound as an " immateriate 
virtue " is given in the parting dialogue of Romeo and Juliet re- 
specting the singing of the lark and of the nightingale. Juliet, 
at last convinced that it is the lark that she hears, exclaims : — 

" It is, it is ! hie hence, be gone, away ! 
It is the lark that sings so out of tune, 
Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps. 
Some say, the lark makes sweet division ; 
This doth not so, for she divideth us. 
Some say the lark and loathed toad chang'd eyes ; 
O now I would they had chang'd voices too ! 
Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray, 
Hunting thee hence with hunts-up to the day" 

Act III. Sc. 5. 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 561 

The scene of Peter with the Musicians (Act IV. Sc. 5) is an- 
other case directly in point of the power of sound over the feel- 
ings. Peter requests the musicians to play some " merry dump " 
to comfort him. 

"Peter. Musicians, oh, musicians, 'Heart's ease, heart s ease.' Oh, an you 
will have me live, play heart 's ease. 
1 Mus. Why heart 's ease ? 

Pet. Oh, musicians, because my heart itself plays — my heart is full : Oh, 
play me some merry dump to comfort me. . . . Answer me like men. 
When griping grief the heart doth wound 

And doleful dumps the mind oppress, 
Then music with her silver-sound ; 
Why silver-sound ? Why music with her silver-sound ? What say you, Simon 
Catling ? 

1 Mus. Marry, sir, because silver hath a sweet sound. 
Pet. Pratest. What say you, Hugh Rebeck ? 

2 Mus. I say — silver-sound, because musicians sound for silver. 
Pet. Pratest too. What say you, James Soundpost ? 

3 Mus. Faith, I know not what to say. 

Pet. Oh, I cry you mercy ! you are the singer : I will say for you. It is — 
music with her silver sound, because such fellows as you have seldom gold for 
sounding. 

Then music with her silver sound 

With speedy help doth lend redress." 

It is evident that this scene is expressly introduced in order to 
give a humorous version of the power of sound to affect the mind. 

The foregoing examples are probably sufficient to show that 
illustrations of sound as an " immateriate virtue " are systemati- 
cally introduced into the play. The same is true of sight, of which 
some instances may be given. 

At the very opening of the play, this key is struck. The Capu- 
let servant says to his companion, — 

" I strike quickly being moved. 
Greg. But thou art not quickly moved to strike. 
Sams. A dog of the house of Montague moves me" etc. 

In the garden-scene, from which there have been adduced ex- 
amples of the potency of sounds, there are also examples of sight 
and its power to awaken the imagination, as in the following : — 

" She speaks : — 
O, speak again, bright angel ! for thou art 
As glorious to this night, being o'er my head 
As is a winged messenger of heaven 
Unto the ivhite-upturnal wondering eyes 
3G 






/ 



562 ' EOMEO AND JULIET. 

Of mortals, that fall back to gaze on him, 
When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds 
And sails upon the bosom of the air." 

The most striking example of the effects of looks and aspects 
upon the mind is that of the mutual glances of Romeo and Juliet, 
with which their intoxication of passion commences. 

The Nurse gives a description of a sight that produces a power- 
ful effect. 

' ' I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes 

God save the mark ! here on his manly breast. 
A piteous corse, a bloody piteous corse ; 
Pale, pale as ashes, all bedauVd in blood 
All in gore blood : I swounded at the sight." 

The most important instances, however, of the operation of 
both sight and sound upon the mind are offered by those inci- 
dents of the play which occasion misconstructions and mistakes 
that are fruitful of the most tragic results. 

Act I. Sc. 2 is given up almost entirely to a dialogue of which 
the effect of sights and of beauty upon the eye and feelings are 
the theme. 

The Shakespeare plays, though they are so constructed that 
they each may be taken to illustrate some one province or branch 
of Science or Philosophy, do not confine themselves to one view 
of it, but generally touch on several branches of knowledge, all 
however affined with the main subject. The foregoing citations 
make it apparent that there are characters and passages in this 
play which can be used if need be, to exemplify the Arts of Divi- 
nation and Fascination, as laid down by Bacon ; Romeo very 
clearly representing in the forebodings and presentiments of his 
character Natural Divination ; and the Friar by his counsels 
(which are predictions of certain consequences that will follow 
meditated action) giving instances of Artificial Divination or 
" prediction by argument concluding upon signs and tokens," 
while both Romeo and Juliet are in their mutual bewitchment of 
looks and glances an example of Fascination. And to these are 
added also many illustrations of the influence over the feelings of . 
sights and sounds, i. e. of looks and words, all which fall under 
the head of " immateriate virtues " as classified by Bacon. 

But words, as sounds that move the feelings, are connected 
with the rhetorical side of the piece, of which the characters, 



EOMEO AND JULIET. 563 

being strongly affected by imagination and passion, naturally 
speak the language of poetry. Passion begets poetry, and love 
makes all men idealists. The propensity on the part of lovers to 
seek figurative and musical expression seems to be alluded to in 
the following lines : — 

" Ah, Juliet, if the measure of thy joy 
Be heap'd like mine, and that thy skill be more 
To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath 
This neighbour air ; and let rich music's tongue 
Unfold the imagin'd happiness, that both 
Receive in either, by this dear encounter." 

Act II. Sc. 6. 

Viewed with respect to its composition, this play has many 
passages that suggest coincidences between them and Bacon's 
remarks on " Poesy " and " the Arts of Speech." 

" Poesy," according to Bacon, " is taken in two senses ; in re- 
spect of words or matter. In the first sense, it is but a character 
of speech ; for verse is only a hind of style, and a certain form 
of elocution." 

In the latter sense, poetry " is nothing else but an imitation of 
history at pleasure" of which the epic narrative is the noblest 
instance, but of which, also, ordinary examples abound in tales, 
like that of Brooke's Romeus and Juliet, which furnished the 
fable of this tragedy. 

As for the different styles of poetry, such as "the Satire, 
Elegy, Epigram, Ode, and the like," Bacon refers them to 
philosophy, and the Arts of Speech. 

These " arts " fall under the head of The Transmission of 
Knowledge, which is divided by Bacon into the Organ (Gram- 
mar), the Method, and the Ornament of Speech. 

To Grammar are referred " all accidents of words of what kind 
soever, such as sounds, measure, accent." 

Of measure, Bacon thus speaks : — 

"The measures of words has produced a vast body of Art, 
namely, Poesy, considered with reference, not to the matter of it, 
but to the style and forms of words, that is to say, metre or verse, 
wherein the Art we have is a very small thing, but the examples 
are large and innumerable. Neither should that art which the 
ancients called Prosody be confined to the teaching of the kinds 
and measures of- verse. Precepts should be added as to the hinds 



I 



564 ROMEO AXD JULIET. 

- suit each matter or subject." De Aug. Book 
VI. ch. i. 

This last remark points to the styles best adapted to different 
subjects, which, according to the emotions and associations they 
awaken, demand a certain mode of elocution. — as is seen in the 
ode, elegy, ballad, and the like, of which custom has fixed the 
measures and the forms. Of such differences of style, there are 
numerous examples in the play. for. though different measures 
can be introduced but slightly into dramatic dialogue, yet the 
spirit and sentiment that inspire the use of different measures 
can be so far infused into dramatic verse as to make it distinctly 
imitative of a special style. 

For instance, the description of Queen Mab and her equipage 
is zpoem of the far, 

••' Oh. then I see Queen Mab hath been with you. 

She is the Fairies' midwife, and she comes 

In shape no bigger than an agate-stone 

On the forefinger of an alderman. 

Drawn with a team of little atomies 

Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep : 

Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs ; 

Her cover of the w;i^ :: grasshoppers : 

Her traces of the smallest spider's web ; 

The collars, of the moonbeam's wat'ry beam ; 

The whip, of ei one ; the lash, of film ; 

Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat." etc. 

Act I. Sc. 4. 

This collection of similes put together arbitrarily for the mere 
amusement of the mind, without any particular bond of union, 
should be compared with Juliet's soliloquy (Act IV. Sc. 3), which 
is a poem of the imagination, in which a throng of images are 
fused into one total impression by the influence of an overpower- 
ing emotion. 

Act I. Sc. 3. Xurse's description of Juliet's childhood is 
dramatic narrative in character. But to distinguish it from the 
ordinary dramatic verse of the play, the mannerisms of the Xurse 
are heightened, and this gives to the character so strong an indi- 
viduality that some critics insist that the picture is copied from 



life. 

Act I. Sc. 1. 



<; Madam, an hour before the worshipped sun 
Peer'd through the golden window of the East 






ROMEO AND JULIET. 565 

A troubled mind drove me to walk abroad ; 
Where, underneath the grove of sycamore," etc. 

This passage is a specimen of that kind of style which raises a 
prosaic and common subject by the use of poetical diction and 
imagery. In Montague's reply, we have the lines, — 

" But all so soon as the all-cheering sun 
Should in the furthest East begin to draw 
The shady curtains from Aurora's bed, 
Away from light steals home my heavy son," etc., — 

which are mere verbiage, and probably intended as such, for 
"at day-break." The passage should be contrasted with the 
Friar's last speech (Act V. Sc. 3), which recounts concisely and 
without the least ornament the most important events of the 
play. 

Act I. Sc. 5. The dialogue between Romeo and Juliet at their 
first meeting takes the form of a sonnet. The springing into life 
of a powerful desire and its importunity for immediate gratifica- 
tion are veiled and even exalted and refined by the gracefulness 
and courtesy with which Romeo solicits the favor of a kiss. It 
takes — together with Juliet's reply — the form of a sonnet, and 
is expressed in alternate rhymes, after the fashion of the sonnets 
of Shakespeare's age. 

Act III. Sc. 2. Juliet's invocation to Night has been very con- 
clusively shown by Halpin in the Shakespeare Society Papers 
(Vol. II.) to be epithalamic or a nuptial song, which was a distinct 
style of poetry, with peculiar modes of thought and allusions. 
This kind of writing is fully exemplified in Ben Jonson's Hy- 
mencei. 

Act III. Sc. 5. The dialogue between Romeo and Juliet at 
parting. This is an imitation of a kind of dialogue poem " which 
took its rise," says Gervinus, " at the time of the Minnesingers — 
the dawn-song. The uniform purport of these songs is that two 
lovers, who visit each other by night for secret conference, ap- 
point a watcher, who wakes them at dawn of day, when, unwilling 
to separate, they dispute between themselves or with the watch- 
man, whether the light proceeds from sun or moon, the waking 
song from the nightingale or the lark : in harmony with this is 
the purport of this dialogue, which indeed far surpasses every 
other dawn-song in poetic charm and merit." 



ROMEO AM) JULIET. 

/Act I. Sc. 3. Lady Capulet's description of Paris under the 
fio-ure of a book is an all eg 

" Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face, 
And find delight writ there with beauty's pen ; 
Examine every several lineament. 
And see how one another lends content : 
And what obscur'd in this fair volume lies 
Eind written in the margin of his eyes." etc 

Act II. Sc. 3. Friar Laurence's soliloquy is < 

" The earth that 's nature's mother is her tomb ; 
What is her burying grave that is her womb : 
And from her womb children of divers kind 
We sucking on her natural bosom find ; 

i :t many virtues excellent. 
Xone but for some, aud yet all diffe re nt ," etc. 

Act III. Sc. 5. Capulet's description of Juliet is a short 

u How now ? a conduit, girl ? what, still in tc 
Evermore showering ? In one little body 
Thou counterfeit'st a bark, a sea. a wind ; 
Eor still thy eyes, which I may call the B 
Do ebb and flow with tears : the bark thy bod] 
Sailing in this salt flood ; the winds, thy 
Which, raging with thy tears, and they with them. 
"Without a sudden calm, will overset 
Thy tempest-tossed body." 

Act* I\ . Sc. 5. Lamentations of Capulet family over Juliet, 
apparently dead, are an elegiac ode. 

" Ladff Cap. Aeeurs'd. unhappy, wretched, hateful day ! 
Most miserable hour that e'er time saw 
In lasting labour of his pflgximafi 

But one, poor one, one poor and loving child, 
But one thing to rejoice and solace in. 
And cruel death hath catch'd it from my sight. 
Nurse. O woe ! oh, woeful, woeful, woeful day ! 

it lamentable day ! most woeful day ! 
That ever, ever I did yet behold. 
Oh day ! oh day ! oh day ! oh woeful day ! 
Xever was seen so black a day as this. 
Oh woeful day ! oh woeful 

Paris. Beguil'd, divorced, wronged, spited, slain ! 
Most detestable death, by thee beguil'd, 
By cruel, cruel thee quite overthrown ! 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 567 

O love ! O life ! not life, but love in death ! 

Cap. Despis'd, distressed, hated, martyr' d, killed ! 

Uncomfortable time ! why cam'st thou now 

To murder, murder our solemnity ? 

O child ! O child ! my soul, and not my child ! 

Dead art thou ! Alack ! my child is dead ; 

And with my child my joys are buried." 

These lines are obviously elegiac, and in their abruptness and 
lyrical repetitions imitate the ode. In accordance with the 
14 form " of the piece, the whole burden is thrown on the day, 
the hour, the time. It will be noted also that each of these dif- 
ferent laments is moulded on the same form of words and that 
there is but little difference in their sentiments. In the strain of 
Capulet there is some trace of feeling ; in Lady Capulet's less ; 
Paris mourns only for his own disappointment ; and the Nurse, 
who probably is as much or more grieved than any, cannot, for 
vacuity of thought, do more than repeat the same words over and 
over again. 

These formal lamentations are very artfully conceived, for 
Juliet is not dead, as the spectator knows, and had the wailings 
over her body been passionate and real, the effect would have 
been either ludicrous or repulsive. 

Act V. Sc. 1. The description of the Apothecary and his shop 
has always been admired as a fine example of word-painting, or 
purely descriptive poetry. 

Act V. Sc. 3. The lines which Paris recites at Juliet's tomb 
are a dirge. 

Both the hero and the heroine are endowed with the poetical 
faculty and temperament. Their speech is lyrical, with a tendency 
to exaggeration that just verges on hyperbole, without quite drop- 
ping into it. For instance, Juliet says : — 

" Is Romeo slaughtered and is Tybalt slain ? 
My dear lov'd cousin and my dearer lord ? 
Then let the trumpet sound the general doom, 
For who is living, if these two are gone ? " 

This manner proves the engrossment of the imagination with 
the objects that excite it and marks the emotional temperament 
of the speaker. Romeo is distinguished for this vein ; it gives 
a poetical note to the whole piece and causes the lyrical to pre- 
dominate over the dramatic in the style. 



568 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

The above imitations of various poetic styles, some of which 
call for a highly lyrical and impassioned strain, are not wanting 
in the true fire ; they are genuine poetry, yet they in no wise con- 
flict with the dramatic business of the piece, but serve both to 
develop character and advance the plot. 

In like manner, and on a larger scale, the whole piece serves a 
double purpose : it portrays in its hero and heroine the effects of 
indulging imagination and passion unduly ; it endows them with 
a temperament, through which they idealize not only the object 
of their passion but the passion itself ; they " speak pearls and 
roses," like the heroine of the fairy tale, and win our interest for 
their characters and fortunes, and at the same time they are made 
vehicles of certain philosophical tenets, showing that the play 
follows a scientific method, and that its poetry (contrary to all 
theory) is not written through heat of imagination, but through 
the power of an intellect that looked through and dominated 
every subject both in matter and style, and simulated at will 
every phase of the human mind, rendering this dramatist the 
king of literature, the transcendent master of literary form. 

Besides containing these imitations of poetic styles, the play 
displays an unusual variety of figures, there being scarce any 
ordinary trope or figure of speech known to rhetoricians — as the 
simile, apostrophe, personification, vision, climax, hyperbole, and 
others — that does not occur in it. 

Under the head of "Grammar and the Arts of Speech" there 
are considered, besides measures of words and their sounds, also 
simple letters and their sounds, of which some examples are put 
into the play. 

" Nurse. Doth not rosemary and Romeo both begin with a letter ? 
Rom. Ay, nurse, what of that ? both with an R. 

Nurse. Ah, mocker ! that 9 s the dog's name ; R. is for the nonce : I know it 
begins with another letter." 

So the Nurse says to Eomeo, who has flung himself on the 
ground in despair : — 

" Stand an you be a man : 
For Juliet's sake, for her sake, rise and stand. 
Why should you fall into so deep an ? " 

The following, however, is a locus classicus with respect to the 
influence on the mind of words and letters, regarded as sounds : — 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 569 

" Jul. What devil art thou, that dost torment me thus ? 
This torture should be roar'd in dismal hell. 
Hath Romeo slain himself ? Say thou but / 
And that same vowel I shall poison more 
Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice. 
/ am not /, if there be such an /, 
Or these eyes shut that make thee answer /. 
If he be slain, say — I ; or if not, — no : 
Brief sounds determine of my weal or woe." 

As the influence of sounds upon the mind — exemplified chiefly 
by words — enters intrinsically into the plan of the piece, — 
sounds being held as analogous to sights and the rays of things 
and these last in turn to the radiations and influences of the stars 
on the tempers of men, — there is kept up throughout the play a 
jingle of words, not only by conceits and puns, but also by the 
introduction of jeux de mots, echoes and repetitions of sounds, 
some of them occurring in the most serious and passionate pas- 
sages, greatly to the ire of the sticklers for classic regularity, par- 
ticularly Dr. Johnson, who, in speaking of the play, says, — 

" The persons, however distressed, have a conceit left them in 
their misery, a miserable conceit." 

In Romeo's outburst of despair (Act III. Sc. 3) at being 
exiled and obliged to leave behind him Verona and Juliet's 
beauties, and " the white wonder of her hand," on which he says 
" flies may seize," he ventures on one or two puns, as, — 
" Flies may do this, when I from this musty??/ ; " — 

and again, in the same speech, he asks the Friar : — 

" Hast thou no poison mixt, no sharp-ground knife, 
No sudden mean of death, though ne'er so mean ? " 

These clenches may perhaps be psychologically justified as the 
efforts of a mind to escape its anguish in an unnatural levity, — 
somewhat on the same principle, perhaps, as that which Romeo 
adverts to when he says, — 

" How oft when men are at the point of death 
Have they been merry ? M — 

yet it can hardly be denied that they check the sympathy of the 
reader or spectator. The poet seems to have been willing io sacri- 
fice to some slight extent the strict dramatic propriety of his dia- 
logue to the requirements of the philosophic side of the play ; 
they are in accordance with u the form " or law of the piece, which 



570 KOMEO AND JULIET. 

demands that a forecast of coming events should be made from 
the world of eye and ear around us, a task exceedingly difficult 
to do effectively on account of the ambiguity of sights and 
sounds ; and the poet, therefore, in painting this ambiguous 
world, particularly of sound, draws largely upon the double mean- 
ing attached to sounds when used as words. The play opens with 
a volley of puns, which both exhibits the ambiguity of sounds and 
furnishes comic matter for the piece. Of this style there are 
many passages, and, indeed, whole scenes. One feature of a 
Shakespearian play is that in the use of language it gives promi- 
nence to that property of it which puts it in direct relation to 
the organic idea, and this property in Romeo and Juliet being 
sound, it occasions constant examples of words which (aside from 
puns and quibbles) excite attention as sounds ; as in the follow- 
ing lines : — 

" My concealed lady to our cancelVd love." 

" These times of woe afford no time to woo" 

" We see the ground whereon these woes do lie, 

But the true ground of all these piteous woes," etc. 

* 

" And let them measure us by what they will, 
We 11 measure them a measure and be gone." 

" While we were interchanging thrusts and blows 
Came more and more and fought on part and part 
Till the prince came, who parted either part." 

" I, measuring his affections by mine own 
That most are busied when they are most alone, 
Pursued my business, not pursuing his, 
And gladly shunn'd who gladly fled from me." 

Such passages are perfectly plain and unequivocal; they are 
free from quibbles, yet call attention to the words as sounds. 

For the same reason, no doubt, the Nurse's sense of the advan- 
tage of a match with Juliet is thus expressed : — 

" I tell you he that can lay hold of her 
Shall have the chink." 

But this extraordinary and inexhaustible artist goes a step 
further, and introduces at times in an apparently casual and inad- 
vertent way echoes of sounds by ingeniously framing passages of 
considerable length so as to produce constant repetitions of words ; 
as in the Friar's rebuke of the Capulet family. 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 571 

" Peace, ho ! for shame ! Confusion's cure lives not 
In these confusions. Heaven and yourself 
Had part in this fair maid ; now heaven hath all : 
And all the better is it for the maid : 
Your part in her you could not keep from death, 
But heaven keeps his part in eternal life. 
The most you sought was her promotion ; 
For 'twas your heaven she should be advanced: 
And weep you now, seeing she is advanced 
Above the clouds, as high as heaven itself ? 
Oh, in this love, you love your child so ill, 
That you run mad, seeing that she is well. 
She 's not well married that lives married long ; 
But she 's best married that dies married young," etc. 

Act IV. Sc. 5. 

Another passage may be given as a proof that this style is not 
accidental. 

" Hast thou slain Tybalt ? wilt thou slay thyself? 
And slay thy lady, that in thy life lives, 
By doing damned hate upon thyself? 
Why rail'st thou on thy birth, the heaven and earth, 
Since birth and heaven and earth all three do meet 
In thee at once, which thou at once would'st lose ? 
Fie, fie, thou sham'st thy shape, thy love, thy wit ; 
Which, like an usurer, abound'st in all 
And usest none in that true use indeed 
Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit" etc. 

Act III. Sc. 3. 

See also Act IV. Sc. 1. Dialogue between Paris and Juliet ; 
and numerous short passages in which the same artifice is used. 

One of the most ingenious examples of the ambiguity of sounds 
is Juliet's speech to her mother, of which the meaning depends 
upon the in/lection of the voice, and is an avowal of hate or of 
love according as it is pronounced. 

" Indeed I never shall be satisfied 
With Borneo till I behold him — dead — 
Is my poor heart so for a kinsman vext. 
Madam, if you could find out but a man 
To bear a poison, I would temper it ; 
That Romeo should upon receipt thereof 
Soon sleep in quiet. O how my heart abhors 
To hear him nam'd — and cannot come to him — 
To wreak the love I bore my cousin 
Upon his body that hath slaughter'*! him." 

Act III. Sc. 5. 



/ 



572 KOMEO AND JULIET. 

As an offset to the puns and quibbles of the play and the use 
of the same sounds for different things, tautological and synony- 
mous phrases are introduced, in which many sounds are used to 
express the same thing ; for instance, this of the Nurse : — 

" There 's no truth, 
No faith, no honesty in man ; all perjur'd, 
All, all forsworn, all naught, and all dissemblers." 

Here are seven different sounds for the expression of the same 
thought. She goes on : — 

" These griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old." 

In the following, nine different names or sounds are given to 
the same object. 

" Nurse. Mistress ! — what, mistress ! — Juliet, — fast, I warrant her; 
Why lamb ! why lady ! Fie, you slug-a-bed ! 
Why, love, I say ! Madam! Sweet-heart! why, bride! 
What not a word ! . . . 

How sound she is asleep ! 
I must needs wake her : Madam ! madam ! madam ! 



I must needs wake you : Lady ! lady ! lady ! 
Alas I alas I help ! help ! my lady 's dead ! " etc. 

The above series of pet names is characteristic of the Nurse, 
and, like a stroke of color, paints her manner. Indeed, all the 
characters — Romeo, Juliet, Capulet, Mercutio, and the others — 
have a characteristic manner or style. 

A great deal of this species of tautology is scattered through 
the piece ; it is met with in the mouths of the characters without 
distinction, though it is chiefly used to portray the Nurse. 

Tautology is greatly used in the form of lyric repetition, where 
the mind, surcharged with feeling, is unable to free itself or give 
sufficient emphasis to its utterance without a repetition of the 
word or phrase. It marks also impatience of mind, as is seen in 
old Capulet ; also determination and tenacity of purpose ; also 
excitement and nervousness when one is at a loss what to do ; 
also vacuity of mind when one knows not what to say, and so 
stands repeating what one has already said : in all these cases it 
is used, and furnishes a rhetorical balance to the quibbles and 
conceits of the play. 

The vocabulary and, generally, the composition of the play 
take shape and color from the " form," which being that of a 



EOMEO AND JULIET. 573 

horoscope or " figure of the heavenly houses," involves the concep- 
tions of a house, observation of the hour, and temper. 

Horoscope is Greek ; and the etymon of its last syllable, scope, 
signifies to look at, behold, and metaphorically, to look, to ex- 
amine, think on, view, learn, take heed, etc. The noun skopos 
means a mark to be shot at, and the Latin scopus an aim or pur- 
pose. All these meanings get into the play, the words referring 
to looking, examining, beholding, and sight being very numerous. 

The mention of the hour, the day, the time, is also very fre- 
quent, and many metaphors are taken from a house and the parts 
of it. 

The observation of the hour is equivalent to a survey of events 
at any or every hour for the purpose of calculating their influ- 
ence on the future. This is Artificial Divination, and is per- 
formed by reasoning from causes to effects, to do which properly 
requires a balance of mind and evenness of temper, undisturbed 
by imagination or passion. The word temper is a synonym for 
the mean; it is the result of an exchange of their virtues by 
opposite qualities in such proportion that none predominates. 
Consequently, the two conceptions involved in the law of the 
piece, and aesthetically counterpoised throughout the play, are 
balance and predominance ; the first embracing the notions of 
exchange and equality, and all phrases implying an interchange 
of opposites that balance or check each other, and produce a 
mean state, and the latter of said conceptions, namely, predomi- 
nance, being affined with extremity and excess, the too much and 
too little, and including also the alternation of opposites, where 
each is predominant in turn ; which last is conspicuous also in the 
characterization, as in old Capulet, in whose temper one extreme 
follows another. 

As with balance of mind is associated deliberation, so with 
excess and predominance may be taken haste, desperation, etc. 

The junction of opposites that do not temper each other — and 
the same is true of the alternation of opposites — produces strong 
contrasts, of which there are examples in incidents, characters, 
and dialogue. They come up in various forms, as, for instance, 
in simile, — 

" So shews a snowy dove trooping among crows 
As yonder lady o'er her fellows shews; w — 

also in antithesis, as in liomeo's description of Ids love, — 



574 ROMEO AXD JULIET. 

" O brawling love ! O loving hate ! " 
" Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health," etc. — 

or in Juliet's attempt to utter her feelings that struggle between 
love and hate : — 

" serpent heart, hid with a flow'ry face ! 

Beautiful tyrant ! fiencTangelical ! 

Despised substance of divinest show ! 

Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st ! 

Was ever book containing such vile matter 

So fairly bound ? M etc. 

Observe that Romeo's antitheses are prompted by an affected 
love, and are mere logical contradictions, whereas Juliet's are 
antitheses of true passion, and might possibly exist. 

Details of the diction and metaphors need not be given : only 
a few examples of phrases containing the notions of balance or 
rjredoininance will be cited, and these because the special law of 
this piece, which requires that the opposite qualities in the nature 
of men should temper each other and produce a perfect ration- 
ality of thought and action, is also the general law or method of 
the Shakespearian drama in which the two opposites that are al- 
ways involved in " the form " must so temper each other as to give 
a tone to the piece perfectly consonant with judgment and good 
taste. 

The following are examples of balance, equality, or exchange : 

" Tut, tut, you saw her fair, none else being by, 
Herself pols'd with herself, in either eye," etc. 

" If love he rough with you, be rough with love : 
Prick love for pricking and you beat love down." 

" Is she riot down so late or up so early f " 

" I have been feasting with mine enemy, 
T\ here on a sudden one has wounded me 
That J s by me wounded." 

u My words would bandy her to my sweet love 
As his to me." 

" Nurse. Fie, how my bones ache ! what a jaunt have I had ! 
Juliet. I would thou hadst my bones and I thy news." 

" But that he tilts 
With piercing steel at bold Mercutio's breast, 
^ ho, all as hot, turns deadly point to point, 



KOMEO AND JULIET. 575 

And with a martial scorn, with one hand beats 
Cold death aside, and with the other sends 
It back to Tybalt, whose dexterity 
Retorts it." 

" My heart is set 
On the fair daughter of rich Capulet : 
As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine," etc. 

" She whom I love now 
Doth grace for grace and love for love allow." 

Of predominance, excess, haste, etc., the following are some 
examples : — 

" It is a throne where honor may be crown'd 
Sole monarch of the universal earth." 

" She is too wise, too fair ; wisely too fair 
To merit bliss, by making me despair," etc. 

" Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow." 

" Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear," etc. 

" But my true love is grown to such excess 
I cannot sum up half my sum of wealth.' ' 

" The brightness of her cheek would shame the stars, 
As daylight doth a lamp." 

" And that the trunk may be discharg'd of breath 

, As violently as hasty powder fir *d 

Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb" 

These instances are taken at haphazard, and could be indefi- 
nitely multiplied. 

It may be worth while to take a short passage, or part of a 
scene, and analyze its dialogue in order more clearly to appreciate 
the mastery with which this artist, while moving forward his 
action and painting both the passions and minds of his charac- 
ters, still rigidly adheres to his " form," which requires the ex- 
hibition of the influence of sights and sounds over the mind as 
well as breaches of custom, or of " the observation of the hour." 

Act V. Sc. 3. The Watch has given the alarm with respect 
to the death of Paris, Ronjeo, and Juliet. 

Enter Prince and Attendants. 
Prince. What misadventure is so early up 
That calls our person from our morning's rest t 



576 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

[A breach of custom.] 

Enter Capulet and Lady Capulet. 
Cap. What should it be that they so shriek aloud ? 
La. Cap. The people in the street cry Romeo, 
Some Juliet, and some Paris ; and all run 
With open out-cry toward our monument. 

[Sounds that excite fear.] 

Prince. What fear is this that startles in our ears ? 

[The Watch now calls his attention to a terrible sight.] 

Watch. Sovereign, here lies the County Paris slain 

And Romeo dead; and Juliet, dead before, 

Warm and new-kilVd. 

Prince. Seek, search, and know how this foul murder comes. 

[The duty of " observation " in order to form " judgment."] 

Watch. Here is a friar, and slaughter'd Romeo's man ; 

With instruments upon them, fit t to open 

These dead men's tombs. 

Cap. O, heaven ! O, wife ! look how our daughter bleeds ! 

This dagger hath mistaken, — for lo ! his house 

Is empty on the back of Montague, — 

And is mis-sheathed in my daughter's bosom. 

[A dreadful sight, together with circumstances greatly out of 
time and place, and contrary to custom.] 

La. Cap. O me ! this sight of death is as a bell 
That warns my old age to a sepulchre. 

[A sight illustrated by a sound that is predictive of a future 

event.] 

Enter Montague and others. 

Prince. Come, Montague, for thou art early up 
To see thy son and heir now early down. 

[Untimely incidents expressed by a jingle of words that makes 
them more impressive.] 

Mon. Alas, my liege, my wife is dead to-night ; 
Grief of my son's exile hath stopp'd her breath : 
What further woe conspires against my age ? 
Prince. Look and thou shalt see. 
Mon. Oh, thou untaught ! what manners is in this 
To press before thy father to a grave ? 

[The pathos of this apostrophe is derived from the expression 
of a father's grief by a figure taken from manners, which them- 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 577 

selves are derived from the " observation of the time or period of 
life."] 

"Prince. Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while, 

Till we can clear these ambiguities 

And know their spring, their head, their true descent, 

And then will I be general to your woes, 

And lead you even to death." 

[The Prince advises an observation of the events of the hour 
in order to explain their ambiguities, and discover their causes, 
when he will be ready to take all necessary action. He shows his 
earnestness by his tautology.] 

As " a form " permeates the whole of a play, it necessarily con- 
verts a piece into a dramatic imitation of that species of writing 
from which " the form " is taken ; and this in this tragedy being 
a horoscope, or " figure of the heavens," the play will have feat- 
ures in its construction that will bear resemblance to such a writ- 
ing. Such resemblance or analogy must be of quite a general 
kind, since it is traced between the relations and influences of 
events, together with the loves and hates of men on the one hand 
and the friendly and unfriendly positions and irradiations of the 
stars on the other. Moreover a play that is imitative in its plot 
of a horoscope must present both " the figure " and its fulfillment, 
otherwise it would be without action. Therefore the first act 
answers to " a figure," in which the characters with their hates 
and loves, their " oppositions " and "conjunctions," are like the 
malign and benevolent aspects of the planets in their respective 
" houses," placed in positions with each other that foretoken the 
catastrophe of the play. The enmity of Capulet and Montague, 
the menaces of the Prince against disturbers of the peace, the 
suit of Paris for Juliet's hand, the high temper of Capulet, the 
recklessness of Mercutio, the deadly hate and meditated revenge 
of Tybalt towards Romeo, the dishonesty of the Nurse and her 
attachment to Juliet, the mutual magnetism of Romeo and Juliet 
(on which last all the others shed a baleful influence), are col- 
lected and grouped in such fashion that it would be easy for an 
experienced man to form "a judgment' or prediction of the 
consequences that will follow. It may be further observed that 
the first act is cut off from the rest of the play by a ehorus that 
is utterly unessential, that tells us nothing that we did not know 
or might not readily divine, and that seems interposed only to 
37 



578 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

separate the first act — the horoscope or "figure" — from the 
remainder of the piece, its fulfillment. 

The piece has a strong astrological flavor, so to speak, derived 
from the frequent mention of the heavenly bodies and the meta- 
phors drawn from them. The following figure is taken from 
Astrology itself : — 

" For Venus smiles not in a house of tears." 

The last six lines of the play — for the finish of this artist 
reaches the minutest particulars — partakes strongly of this as- 
trological tone. 

" A glooming peace this morning with it brings, 
[The aspect of the hour] 

The sun for sorrow will not show his head, 

[The sympathy of the heavenly bodies with human affairs, on 
which astrology is founded] 

Go hence, — and have more talk of these sad things. 

[Observation of the events of the hour, and counsel with re- 
spect to their causes and effects.] 

Some must be pardon'd and some punished ; 

[The never-sleeping justice, which, in proportion to the fault, 
awards as consequences pardon or punishment, while in the two 
succeeding lines there is announced, with a deep note of pity, that 
such penalty attends even the truest and sincerest love that heeds 
not the counsels of reason ;] 

For never was a story of more woe 
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo." 



OTHELLO, 

THE MOOR OF VENICE. 

The groundwork of Othello is found in Cinthio's novel of 
" The Moorish Captain," of which no translation into English is 
known earlier than that of Parr in 1795. The poet, no doubt, took 
the story from the original Italian, but made in it marked altera- 
tions, which give it a new meaning and spirit, if not altogether a 
new form. He both added much and omitted much, and what he 
retained he transfigured. In the original novel, it is stated gener- 
ally and briefly that the marriage of Desdemona to the Moor was 
not approved of by her family, and the incident is then dismissed 
without any special significance being attached to it, but in the 
play this circumstance is expanded into the elopement of Desde- 
mona, a great beauty and the heiress of a Venetian Magnifico, 
with Othello, a foreign adventurer ; the pursuit of the couple by 
Brabantio, the outraged father, in company with Eoderigo, a dis- 
appointed suitor of the lady (both which characters are added by 
the dramatist) ; the father's charge against the Moor before the 
Venetian Senate of abducting his daughter and practicing upon 
her with drugs and witchcraft ; the elaborate defense made by 
Othello, supported by Desdemona ; the subsequent reconciliation 
of the father with the married pair, who at once take their depart- 
ure for a foreign military station where the Moor holds the chief 
command, and whither they are followed by Eoderigo, who, under 
the advice of his pretended friend, Iago, hopes by costly presents 
to win from the lady some recognition of his love. These details, 
with their adjuncts, filling the whole first act of the play, are the 
poet's own invention, and give to the story more the air of a novel 
than the original tale itself possesses, and at the same time impart 
to the resulting train of consequences and to the catastrophe a 
depth of meaning of which Cinthio's story shows no trace. 

As a special branch of literature, novels are fictitious histories 
of lives — or, at least, of their more important passages — of 
which the " form " appears to be the delineation of character as 



580 OTHELLO. 

tested, developed, and modified by circumstances. Novels set 
forth in detail' the adventures of their principal personages, and, 
when skillfully written, enable us to see the hidden or remote con- 
sequences of some action or of some bias of character which run 
their course by successive and probable steps to a full period or 
conclusion. Possessing neither the dignity of History nor the ex- 
travagance of Romance, they aim at painting men and manners 
as they actually are, and, although not excluding public events, 
they dwell more particularly on the details of private and domes- 
tic life. Love, envy, jealousy, rivalry, plans for success, plots to 
baffle or ruin others, — these are the stuff out of which novels, or 
" Histories of Lives," are for the most part wrought, and these 
are obviously the subject of Othello, which portrays society on a 
broad scale, giving a most vivid picture of those intrigues and 
passions which form the undercurrents of human intercourse, and 
which, though generally hidden beneath the surface of conven- 
tional decorum, oftentimes break out in deeds of violence that 
attest the barbarism which lurks in the most civilized commu- 
nities. 

The scene of the piece — at least during the first act, which 
gives tone to the rest of the play — is laid in an old, opulent, and 
Christian city, where rank and classes have long been established 
and ancient families attained their greatest influence ; where civil- 
ity and courtesy are the rule of deportment, and form and cere- 
mony give elegance to social intercourse ; where arts and letters 
flourish and order is maintained by law and religion. These feat- 
ures are apparent in the habitual sentiments which disclose the 
education and ways of life of the characters. As for law, it may 
be noticed that the statutes against witchcraft, " the bloody book 
of law in its bitter letter," which was one of the greatest blots on 
the civilization of the sixteenth century, are brought prominently 
into view ; but, to pass by many minor allusions, the sway of 
law is emphatically marked by the introduction of the Venetian 
Senate, the outward and visible representative of the justice of 
the nation, while the religious opinions and beliefs of the charac- 
ters are apparent in their repeated and familiar allusions to Chris- 
tian doctrine and practice. Of these, a few may be cited, as, for 
instance, this of Iago, — 



"Were it to renounce his baptism, 
All seals and symbols of redeemed sin," — 






OTHELLO. 581 

or this to the keys of Peter, — 

"You, mistress, 
That hold the office opposite St. Peter 
And keep the gate of hell," — 

or this to a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, — 

" I know a lady who would walk barefoot to Palestine for a touch of his 
nether lip," — 

or, again, this to Church discipline, — 

" This hand of yours requires 
. A sequester from liberty, fastings and prayer, 
Much castigation, exercise devout," etc. 

Othello, in his remorse, consigns himself to most orthodox gulfs 
of liquid fire, and Desdemona, in repelling Othello's accusations 
of unchastity, employs the same peculiar language which St. Paul 
makes use of in denouncing the same sin. ^Emilia would " ven- 
ture purgatory " to make her husband a monarch, and prays that 
he who has poisoned Othello's mind may be rewarded " with the 
serpent's curse," while Iago in Scriptural language avows himself 
to be the devil or negative of truth, saying, " I am not what I 
am" Angels and devils, heaven and hell are repeatedly men- 
tioned, and the dread responsibilities of the future life as seen 
from the Christian point of view give a special, not to say an 
oppressive, horror to the catastrophe. The characters are not 
merely assumed to be members of a Christian and civilized com- 
munity, but are designedly and strongly stamped as such. Chris- 
tianity is blended with the life of the State, and is the basis and 
standard of its civilization. 

The hero, then, of a novel or "fictitious life," who is most 
entitled to admiration and honor, as coming nearest to perfection, 
is one who exhibits the greatest spirit of love and self-sacrifice, or 
one who most nearly approaches the Christian ideal. 

It may be observed that a part of the action of the piece is a 
war between Venice and the infidel — or as the " Duke " styles 
him " the general enemy Ottoman " — from which word general 
it may be inferred that the Duke thinks of the Turk as Bacon 
did, when in his "Advertisement touching a Holy War," he 
broached the argument that it was obligatory on every Christian 
nation, as such, to make war upon the Turk as infidel. This war 
is not found in Cinthio's novel, and as it ends almost as soon as it 



/ 



582 OTHELLO. 

is begun, by the destruction of the Turkish fleet in a storm, it is 
an addition made by the dramatist, apparently for the purpose 
and certainly with the effect of raising in the mind a contrast be- 
tween Christian and heathen states, and causing us to associate 
the action of the piece with a Christian civilization. It is an 
instance of the subtile art with which this writer colors our 
thoughts, whilst apparently intent on some other purpose. It is 
a proof, moreover, that in dramatizing an old story this poet did 
not merely versify it, no matter with what power of poetry or of 
pathos, but worked artistically and according to a controlling 
idea; for he was one who saved himself all unnecessary labor, 
and whenever he found that the thoughts or inventions of others 
sorted with his purpose he adopted them without scruple or hesi- 
tation ; but on the other hand, if invention of his own was neces- 
sary, it never failed him, and his alterations, modifications, and 
additions to the original fable are always made with an eye to 
some idea which he puts at the bottom of his play. 

It may be worth while also to note a curious contrast between 
passages of the play and those points on which Bacon grounds 
his charge of barbarism against the Turks. These last are as fol- 
lows : — 

" A cruel tyranny, bathed in the blood of their emperors upon 
every succession; a heap of vassals and slaves; no nobles, no 
gentlemen, no freemen, no inheritance of land, no stirp of ancient 
families ; a people that is without natural affection, and, as the 
Scripture saith, that regarcleth not the desires of women : and 
without piety or care towards children ; a nation without morality, 
without letters, arts or sciences : that can scarce measure an acre 
of land or an hour of the day : base and sluttish in buildings and 
diets and the like ; and in a word, a very reproach to human 
society." 

In the Christian community represented in the play, instead of 
a tyranny " bathed in blood at every succession," we find a Senate 
with an elective Duke or Doge ; instead of a " heap of vassals, 
without nobles, gentlemen, or ancient families," we have degree 
and rank and gentility especially marked ; instead of being with- 
out " inheritance of land," it is expressly mentioned, — 

" Gratiano, keep the house 
And seize upon the fortunes of the Moor, 
For they succeed to you ; " — 



OTHELLO. 583 

instead of a people "without natural affection or care of chil- 
dren, 5 ' there is exemplified in Brabantio the utmost parental love 
and family care; instead of a nation "without morality," the 
people of the play all speak and act with reference to a moral 
standard, as for instance, — 

" Worthy Montano, you were wont be civil ; 
The gravity and stillness of your youth 
The world hath noted, and your name is great 
In mouths of wisest censure ; " — 

instead of being " without letters or arts," direct allusions to them 
are made, as in Cassio's description of Desdemona, — 

" A maid 
That paragons description and wild fame ; 
One who excels the quirks of blazoning pens, 
And in the essential vesture of creation 
Doth tire the inginer " [the poet] ; — 

instead of an " inability to measure an hour of the day," measure 
of time by clocks is directly spoken of, — 

• " He will watch the horologe a double set" — 

and instead of " sluttishness and baseness in diet," great state and 
ceremony are kept in their banquets, as witness the trumpets that 
summon the guests of Othello to supper, — 

" Hark, how these instruments summon to supper, 
And the great messengers of Venice stay." 

These little points mark the high finish the play-writer gives 
his piece as a picture of civil society ; and they make evident, 
moreover, that he and Bacon had precisely the same notion with 
regard to the constituents of civilization. 

States are civilized in proportion to their knowledge and ob- 
servance of laws, physical and mental, of which the most impor- 
tant are those that regulate human conduct. These are derived 
from a knowledge of man's nature and relations, and among 
Christian peoples are allowed to find their best and highest ex- 
pression in the precepts of their religion. A perfectly civilized 
society would be one of which each member were self-governed. 
This would argue an absolute supremacy of the reason, a perfect 
obedience of the will, an unfailing performance of duty, a culti- 
vation of all the gentle and humane qualities : whereas, on the 
other hand, the ascendency of the blood and passions is aeeoni- 



! 



584 OTHELLO. 

parried by vice, violence, cruelty, in one word, barbarism. Chris- 
tianity and civilization, therefore, come to be equivalent terms. 
Respect for law differences the Christian gentleman from the 
lavage, — a difference recognized by Othello, when repressing the 
affrav between Montano and Cassio he exclaims : — 

•• I shame, put by this barbarous brawl." 

Civilitv. therefore, taken in its largest sense, varies with man's 
knowledge and cultivation. On this point. Bacon in his Essay 
on " Nature in Man '' thus expresses himself : " A man's nature 
runs either to herbs or weeds ; therefore let him seasonably w*ater 
the one and destroy the other." a thought which Iago with a 
somewhat diffuse rhetoric expands as follows : — 

>ar bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners ; so that 
if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop or weed up thyme, supply it 
with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many, either have it sterile with 
idleness or manured with industry, why. the power and corrigible authority of 
this lies in our wills." 

And he adds : — 

" If the balance of our- lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of 
sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to the most 
preposterous conclusions. But we have reason to cool our raging motions/ 5 
Act I. Sc. 3. 

In the play — in which European civilization, as it existed at the 
opening of the seventeenth century, may. perhaps, be considered 
to be on trial — these two opposite sides of man's nature, the 
rational and the sensual, which Centaur-like are blended together, 
half man. half beast, are distinctly put before us. and at times 
the animal side is presented so strongly as to be repulsive : for we 
have here to do with a dramatist, who. inimitable artist as he is. 
yet keeps his eye fixed quite as much, if not more, upon philo- 
sophic truth than on aesthetic effects, and who never flinches from 
painting in the strongest colors what his insight detects : and inas- 
much as these plays may be regarded as a natural history, a com- 
pilation of moral facts and motives in distinct spheres of life, he 
down all that belongs to his subject : in this respect remind- 
ing us of what Bacon says of the introduction into his natural 
history of •• things which (as Pliny says) must be introduced 
with an apology. — such things no less than the most splendid 
and costly must be admitted into natural historv. . . . For what- 



OTHELLO. 585 

ever deserves to exist deserves also to be known, for knowledge is 
the image of existence." Nov. Org. Book I. Aph. 120. 

The unbalanced and one-sided nature of man, and the violent 
contrasts in him of good and evil, which render him " the glory, 
jest, and riddle of the world," almost preclude a perfectly correct 
knowledge of character. Virtue and vice are so blended, and so 
often wear each the mask of the other, that at times it is difficult 
to tell where one ends and the other begins. All our desires and 
affections being legitimate in their use, and licentious only in 
their abuse, they are Janus-faced, and become virtues and vices 
very much according to the direction in which they look. This is 
particularly the case with love, which is intimately allied with 
both sides of man's nature, and is a virtue or a vice according to 
the objects on which it is placed. When awakened by moral 
beauty, that is, by goodness (which even when found in an earthly 
object, is affined with the Highest Goodness), it is of a purity 
which refines and exalts the grosser elements derived from appe- 
tite, and frequently reaches to the sublimest heights of self-sacri- 
fice ; but when excited by physical and personal beauty alone, it 
is a mere impulse of the blood — selfish and sensual. This con- 
trast is presented in the play with a strength that repels some 
readers. But by reason of the double nature of this passion, 
it is not practicable always to draw the line of division between 
the true and the false ; it is, therefore, subject to the grossest mis- 
apprehension, and becomes an habitual theme of calumny. 

But Othello being an ideal picture of life as it exists on its 
ordinary plane, it assumes that 'perfection which should be the 
aim of all men is hardly to be looked for in this world ; and 
therefore the characters are drawn as imperfect beings, made up 
of good and ill together — beings who, however well-intentioned, 
are liable at any moment to have their better judgment over- 
thrown by impulse and passion, and whose sayings and doings 
must in charity be judged with due reference to the peculiar 
circumstances of each case. This compounded nature of man 
is set before us in Iago's description of Cassio, which, coming 
from him, is of course defamatory, but will nevertheless serve for 
an example : — 

" You see this fellow, that is gone before : 
He is a soldier, fit to stand by Cesar 
And give direction. And do hut see his rice ; 




586 OTHELLO. 

'T is to Ms virtue a just equinox, 
The one as long as the other." 

In like manner, Desdemona, whose gentle spirit views all- 
things with charity, endeavors to find excuses for Othello's un- 
kindness in the general weakness of human nature. 

" Nay, we must think 
Men are not gods ; 

Nor of them look for such observance, 
As fit the bridal," etc. 

And in the same vein, Iago, affecting to excuse Cassio's vio 
lence towards Montano, says : — 

" But men are men, the best sometimes forget ." 

And from other passages it would appear that notwithstanding 
perfection is the rule, it is not expected to be met with in practi- 
cal life. 

Owing to their want of balance, men are developed in special 
directions and in varying degrees ; some being more or less in- 
tellectually, others more or less morally, cultivated ; and indeed 
in active life there is frequently found a kind of relative perfec- 
tion or a sufficiency, consisting of a high degree of excellence equal 
to a full discharge of some special office or vocation. For in- 
stance, Othello possesses a sufficiency of ability and fidelity for 
the complete performance of his duty as general of the Venetian 
army. So Iago's intellectual dexterity and Desdemona' s moral 
goodness are all but perfect in their respective kinds, however 
much Iago may lack morality and Desdemona worldly know- 
ledge. The perfect man, however, is fully developed both intel- 
lectually and morally, and is as strict a lover of truth as he is of 
virtue. In Christian lands, the type of perfection is the Chris- 
tian ideal, which is one of wisdom as well as of goodness. This is 
the highest Good, or that Goodness which, as Bacon says, in his 
Essay on the subject, is " of all virtues and dignities of the 
mind the greatest, being the character of the Deity," and as 
existing in man, he defines it to be " the affecting the weal of 
men which answers to the theological virtue, Charity ; " and if 
men in their striving after perfection do not pursue this supreme 
Good which will bring them nearest to perfection, it is a clear 
proof of their blindness and of their selfish desires. For love or 
charity, which is " the law of perfection," and which is all one 



OTHELLO. 587 

with goodness, being " nothing else than goodness put in motion 
and applied " [ Vol. Term. ch. i.] represses the selfish passions 
while it strengthens every social virtue. It is, therefore, the 
great civilizer, softening the manners, prompting aid and service, 
and teaching patience and forgiveness of injuries. On this point 
Bacon is explicit. Treating in his chapter on Moral Knowledge 
of the remedies for the mind, and the best mode of reducing the 
desires and appetites to obedience, he states that the remedy 
" which is the most noble and effectual to the reducing the mind 
to virtue, and placing it in a state nearest perfection, is the- elect- 
ing and propounding into a man's self good and virtuous ends of 
his life and action, such as may be in a reasonable sort within 
his compass to attain" 

After citing some instances of eminent goodness among the 
heathen, he adds : — 

" But these be heathen and profane passages, which grasp at 
shadows greater than the substance, but the true religion and 
Holy Christian faith lays hold of the reality itself by imprinting 
upon men's minds Charity, which is excellently called the bond of 
perfection, because it comprehends and fastens all virtues together. 
And it is elegantly said by Menander of human love (which is 
but a false imitation of divine love), ' That love is a better 
teacher of human life than a left-handed sophist,' whereby he 
means that comeliness of manner is better taught by love than by 
a clumsy preceptor or sophist, whom he calls left-handed ; because 
with all his laborious precepts and rules he cannot form a man so 
dexterously nor with that facility to prize and govern himself in 
all things, as love can do. So certainly, if a maris mind be truly 
inflamed with charity it raises him to a greater perfection than 
all the doctrines of morality can do ; which is but a sophist in 
comparison with the other. . . . All the other qualities which we 
admire in man, though they advance nature, are yet subject to 
excess, whereas Charity alone admits of no excess "... but u by 
aspiring to similitude of God in goodness or love, neither angel 
nor man ever transgressed or shall transgress, for unto that imita- 
tion we are called. ' Love your enemies, bless them that hate you, 
and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you,'' 
etc. De Aug. Book VII. ch. iii. 

Thus we perceive that with Bacon, Christian perfection is the 
model and exemplar of good; this, too, is the doctrine of Othello* 



/ 



588 OTHELLO. 

in which tragedy^the Christian ideal is taken as the standard of 
character. 

This character was incarnate once and was described by an old 
poet as — 

" A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit ; 
The first true gentleman that ever breath'd," — 

the highest type, at once of Christianity and civilization. 

The good and evil in men's natures and in their conduct, plans, 
and usages are subjects on which human judgment is constantly 
exercised ; and a concurrence of these judgments or of most of 
them constitutes Public Opinion, a force more potent over Society 
than either law or religion. It is, moreover, practically the meas- 
ure of civilization, for however perfect in theory the laws of the 
State may be, its civilization is tested by its manners and customs. 
Public opinion makes and unmakes reputation and establishes the 
practical standard of human action ; but it necessarily partakes 
of the imperfections of the source whence it proceeds; and being 
vastly more influenced by prejudice and passion than by careful 
deliberation or charity or love of truth, it often confers praise and 
blame, honor and dishonor most undeservedly. Particularly is it 
exposed to be biased by calumny and is ever too ready to believe 
the worst side of every case without examination. In all states, 
even the most highly civilized, there are barbarous usages, which, 
though condemned by law, are upheld by opinion. One such 
form of barbarism which finds favor to some extent and which is 
of frequent occurrence in all countries, even the most highly 
Christianized, is a bloody revenge for conjugal dishonor. This 
" wild justice," especially where guilt has been made clear, has 
often been upheld and even applauded by Public Opinion. But 
there can be no greater disregard of the justice of the nation. 
Such opinion rests on a false sentiment of honor, the dread of 
shame, of ridicule, and the world's contempt. True honor is the 
meed of praise for service faithfully and ably performed, and as a 
principle of character is a devotion to duty. It is in fact, a name 
for truth and goodness, a conscious rectitude, which, fearing God 
and not man, dares do right without heeding the popular breath, 
and moves on secure in its own approval and its own magnanim- 
ity ; being moreover a reality, it exists independent of opinion, 
but the honor which Society cherishes and which demands that 
every insult shall be wiped out in blood is the offspring of pride 



OTHELLO. 589 

and self-love and lives by and through opinion alone. The stan- 
dard, moreover, by which Public Opinion is formed, will rise no 
higher than the general conscience found among men, and al- 
though some few of higher cultivation will have attained a more 
elevated rule of action, yet even among these will be found so 
great a deference to Public Opinion, that they will in many cases 
violate their own consciences rather than incur the public disap- 
probation. These reflections though trite point to the very heart 
and centre of the play. 

Iago, — honest Iago, as he is called by all who enjoy his ac- 
quaintance, for he is of Machiavelli's opinion, as quoted by Bacon 
when he treats of Evil Arts, " that virtue itself a man should 
not trouble himself to attain, but only the appearance thereof to 
the world, because the credit and reputation of virtue is a help, 
but the use of it an impediment," — honest Iago, who throughout 
the piece speaks the voice of Public Opinion, and reflects the 
sentiments of the generalty, hits off this common conscience, and 
shows how easily provocation rises to. the point where retaliation 
may be held justifiable. 

" Iago. Though in the trade of war I have slain men, 
Yet do I hold it very stuff o' the conscience 
To do no contriv'd murder ; / lack iniquity 
Sometimes to do me service : — nine or ten times 
I thought to have yerk'd him here under the ribs. 
Oth. 'T is better as it is. 

Iago. Nay, but he prated 

And spoke such scurvy and provoking terms 
Against your honour 
That with the little godliness I have 
I did full hard forbear him." 

That Society should allow the libertine to pass scot-free, and 
yet visit the injured husband with scorn and ridicule unless his 
"godliness" is so " little " as not to prevent his " yerking " his 
wronger under the ribs, is a conclusive proof how unchristian are 
its instincts, how barbarous its judgments, for, for the individual 
to seize the sword of justice and act as both judge and execu- 
tioner is a regress to barbarism at a single stride, and proves 
how far modern civilization is removed from the spirit of that 
religion which is its foundation, and of which the chief virtues 
are charity and forgiveness of injuries. 

Yet so long as pride is the predominant passion of Society, so 



OTHELLO. 

long will jealousy of successful rivals, whether in love or business. 
ite hatred and revenge. As man now is. envy and jealousy 

are inseparable from the structure of society, for all societies rest 
on ,~ and degree fosters pride and desire of distinction. 

The world's esteem is the incentive to high deeds and virtuous 
lives, and Society professes to award its prizes of good name and 
fame according to merit, but a true judgment is almost impossi- 
ble, so strong a bias do the affections give to opinion. This is 
the burthen of Iago's complaint against the public service of his 

time. 

•• *T is the erase :: c t: 

Preferment goes by letter and affection, 

And not by old gradation, sh rroond 

Is heir to the first. 91 

Honor creates envy, and envy detraction, so that every channel 
of human society is poisoned and blackened by defamation and 
slander. The unworthy, moreover, will be prompted to compass 
the rewards of virtue and good service by craft and intrigue, 
whilst other illusions that mislead the judgment arise from the 
duplicity of circumstances. To reach the true motives of men, 
and to pass correct judgment upon their conduct, constant refer- 
ence must be had to the circumstances under which they act. but 
circumstances, being but accidents of the truth, lead to very un- 
tain conclusions, both because they can be but seldom fully 
known and because they offer in most cases a. double interpreta- 
tion and point either way. to good or to evil, as they chance to 
be looked at with eyes of charity or eyes of hatred. Thus Des- 
demona marries under circumstances that attract much attention, 
There exists a most striking disparity between herself and her 
husband in race, years, complexion, and country, — in short, in 
all external points. These circumstances are to some, who can 
read her true nature, a convincing proof that her love is so 1 
and spiritualized that it - all unessential differences be- 

tween herself and Othello, and rinds a full contentment in the 
noblenc - mind ; but to others, suspicious and skep- 

tical, these same circumstances are sufficient evidence rhat her 
love is but appetite that craves unnatural 

hilst to her father. Brabantio. who leans to neither 
conclusion, they bring only a conviction that his daughter has 
been wrought upon by M medicines and witchcraft." Throughout 



OTHELLO. 591 

the play is the fallacy of circumstances as indices of the truth 
and their double aspect exposed, and just according to the gloss 
given to them is opinion swayed one way or the other. The only 
corrective for these errors is a patient inquiry into the facts, — 
a trouble that men but seldom incur, except in very important 
cases. Usually their judgments are formed off-hand, and at the 
first glance at the facts, as is most strongly exemplified in this 
tragedy. 

Othello, then, is a picture of Society in which is developed the 
tragic element that lurks in a blind worship of the world's opinion, 
and in too rash and hasty a reliance upon circumstances as ex- 
ponents of the truth. But the analysis of the subject does not 
stop with this surface-view of things. The subject is capable of 
a minuter subdivision, and of a more radical statement. The 
dramatist is not content unless he can exhibit the causes why 
Opinion so often and so greatly errs, and why Circumstance is 
so frequently misinterpreted and rendered deceptive. His plan 
involves the setting forth the means and modes by which these 
errors and deceptions are made effective. Opinion cannot act 
without speech. It is by the faculty of speech that men exercise 
a reciprocal influence on each other ; and the artist, therefore, 
subjects to his analysis speech as the instrument and condition 
of all human society. 

The possession of reason and the moral sense renders man 
human, and the gift of speech renders his humanity available. 
The tongue is the organ of sympathy : it links mind to mind and 
heart to heart, and with its syllables is built the whole fabric of 
human society. Speech should be the true exponent of the in- 
ward man ; words should correspond with things, statements with 
facts, and so essential is truth to the safety of Society that veracity 
is necessarily and instinctively made the point of honor and the 
test of moral worth. But alas ! the apothegm of the wit that 
language was given to man to conceal his thoughts is not more 
witty than it is practically true, — witty only because true, — and 
speech, powerful as it is in the cause of truth, love, praise, honor, 
sincerity, and virtue, is equally potent for hate, malice, slander, 
falsehood, and all the machinations of hell. On mere words fre- 
quently hang the issues of life and death. By speech the devil 
exercises his deadliest malignity over the soul of man ; by it he 
converts trust to suspicion, love to hate, kindness to cruelty, fond- 



592 OTHELLO. 



. as 



ness to contempt, tenderness to murder ; and by it he changes, as 
if words were spells that possessed some infernal necromancy, the 
aspect of everything, and seems to bedim and blacken the purity 
of heaven itself. It is the agency of speech as the utterance of 
the soul and moral nature, by which character is revealed and 
the relations of individuals determined with regard to their mo- 
tives, sentiments, and passions ; its correspondency with thoughts 
and things as constituting truth and its emptiness of these as 
constituting falsehood ; its power to gild and grace error, and its 
deceptive nature as an organ of opinion ; and, above all, its fright- 
ful influence as an instrument of calumny, which the poet has 
assumed as the basis on which to build his grand tragedy of 
Othello, representing Man in Society. 

Wedded love, the foundation of the family, is the most sacred 
human tie ; it is, moreover, the heart and core of Society and the 
very sanctuary of honor. It is, therefore, the relation in which 
the motives and conduct of the parties are subject to the closest 
scrutiny and liable to the greatest misrepresentation. In Othello 
this primary and central principle, this bond of individual happi- 
ness and pledge of social welfare, is represented as the point at 
which the malevolence that dwells darkly in the bosom of Society 
aims, at every opportunity, its deadliest blows ; and if when exem- 
plified in its noblest type and in its essential purity, it falls be- 
neath them, it is but too sad a proof that Society itself is intrin- 
sically corrupt and its education of the individual founded on a 
false principle of honor. 

In this exegesis no full analysis will be attempted of the char- 
acters as dramatic creations. They will be touched upon only 
as embodiments of the philosophical principles which form the 
groundwork of the play. The endeavor will be only to trace the 
first outline sketch of the picture before it was filled in and col- 
ored with all the lights and shades of character. 

Othello, the hero of the tragedy, is a Moor, a soldier of for- 
tune, but a man of heroic and magnanimous nature ; a true lover 
of honor, open, trusting, and noble, and endowed with exceed- 
ing pride of character, even to the verge of vainglory. His life 
has been one of wild adventure, having been passed in battles, 
travels, and moving accidents by sea and land ; and such is his 
love of a free and homeless life that he tells us that he would 
not — 



OTHELLO. 593 

"His unhoused free condition 
Put into circumscription and confine 
For the sea's worth." 

Naturally of high intelligence, yet being of barbaric race he par- 
takes also of barbaric ignorance. Imaginative, credulous, in fact 
superstitious, he actually believes that the " Anthropophagi and 
the men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders " inhabit 
the strange countries he has visited, and that the magic handker- 
chief he gives to Desdemona possesses the talismanic virtues he 
ascribes to it. Having become a Christian, however, he takes 
service with the State of Venice as commander of their army. 
For this high dignity his skill and valor fully qualify him. He 
is remarkable for his devotion to duty, and is ready at the shortest 
notice to relinquish his pleasures and personal wishes to perform 
his duty to the State. He is equally exacting of duty from 
others. No motives of affection or of friendship can soften his 
stern justice. Although much attached to Cassio, his most inti- 
mate friend, whom he had made his lieutenant, and " who had 
shared dangers with him," yet Cassio having been guilty of a 
breach of discipline, he at once makes him an example by dis- 
missal and disgrace. The hardships he has endured and the 
dangers he has encountered have disciplined his temper to a high, 
not to say the very highest, degree of self-government. Of this 
he is conscious ; he claims to possess " a perfect soul" and this 
conviction renders him cool and dispassionate under the most 
trying circumstances. He can look on without visible emotion 
when in battle the cannon puffs his own brother from his arm. 
His reputation with the Venetian Senate is that of one whose 
" nature passion cannot shake"' and as an officer and a soldier he 
is considered "all-in-all sufficient" But notwithstanding his 
dignity, his great heart, and his self-command, Othello is a child 
of the sun ; " his blood is all meridian," and beneath his calm 
and dignified bearing he conceals depths of passion that need but 
the requisite incentives to boil with savage fury. At such mo- 
ments he relapses into the barbarian ; the rolling of his eyes, the 
gnawing of his lip, and the shaking of his frame are tokens of 
ferocity but seldom seen among civilized men. He is then " fa- 
tal," and capable of perpetrating any act, however inhuman and 
desperate. He thus combines in himself in two extremes self- 
command and lawless passion, the respective characteristics of 
38 



/ 



594 OTHELLO. 

civilization and barbarism ; and lie is, therefore, an embodiment 
of the leading conceptions of the play, and a conspicuous exam- 
ple of the product of an imperfect civilization. 

Having taken service with the State of Venice, Othello becomes 
the friend and frequent guest of Brabantio, a Venetian senator 
of the highest dignity, at whose house he meets with Desdemona, 
Brabantio's daughter, and having won her love clandestinely mar- 
ries her. This fact becomes known to Koderigo, a weak young 
gentleman of great pride of wealth, who has pressed his suit 
unsuccessfully to Desdemona. At the instigation of lago, his 
pretended friend, he calls up Brabantio at the dead of night and 
informs him of his daughter's flight : — 

" Your daughter, if you have not given her leave, 
I say again, hath niade a gross revolt ; 
Tying her duty, beauty, wit, and fortunes 
To an extravagant and wheeling stranger 
Of here and everywhere" 

This mode of speaking of Othello, as a mere roaming and irre- 
sponsible adventurer, on the part of Koderigo, a Venetian gentle- 
man, who, however weak in brain, would on that very account 
reflect all the more faithfully the sentiments of his class, throws 
some light (making all due allowance for his disposition to speak 
disparagingly of a rival) on the social estimation in which Othello 
is held among the higher classes of Venice. v 

Brabantio, whose main characteristic is his pride of family 
and position, is horrified at the information ; and, overwhelmed 
with anguish at the thought of the shame his daughter had 
brought upon herself and family, hurries off at once, under the 
guidance of Koderigo, to reclaim her, if possible, from the Moor. 
It may be observed that such is Brabantio's sense of the ineligi- 
bility, not to say degradation, of the match, that he deems the 
silly Koderigo, whom he had previously forbidden his house, a 
preferable son-in-law to Othello. " Oh, would you had had her ! " 
he exclaims to him, as, half frantic, he is about to pursue his 
daughter. Othello, however, is warned of Brabantio's approach 
by lago, who tells him, moreover, — 

" That the Magnifico is much belov'd 
And hath, in his effect, a voice potential 
As double as the duke's. He will divorce you." 

In Othello's reply, much of his character is revealed. We see 



OTHELLO. 595 

the pride he takes in the honorable services he has rendered the 
State, and the consciousness of the high personal consideration he 
is entitled to. We see, also, his recognition of the anomalous 
position he holds among the Venetian aristocracy ; that, although 
of the highest military rank, yet as a stranger and a Moor, with- 
out family or connections that can give him standing or respon- 
sibility, his claims to equality would be repelled if pushed beyond 
his professional position or the limits of ordinary social inter- 
course ; and, consequently, that his match with Desdemona must 
necessarily be held in public estimation as a piece of greater good 
fortune than he could justly aspire to ; whilst, on the other hand, 
his intrinsic worth and manhood and the memory of his royal 
descent give him in his own eyes a full right to win and wear the 
daughter of the proudest Magnifico of the State. 

" Let him do his spite. 
My services, which I have done the signiory, 
Shall out-tongue his complaint. 'T is yet to know 
(Which when I know that boasting is an honour 
I shall promulgate) I fetch my life and being 
From men of royal siege, and my demerits 
May speak unbonnetted to as proud a fortune 
As this that / have reached" 

This is, certainly, the highest personal pride ; yet the very fact 
that he claims, though without rank and " unbonnetted," to be 
entitled on the score of personal merit alone to marry as " proud 
a fortune " as the daughter of a Magnifico, implies a conscious- 
ness that the match will not be looked upon as an equal one by 
Society at large ; and his allusion to his royal descent plainly 
shows the further consciousness that as a foreigner of unknown 
origin, his want of lineage is a particular objection to an alliance 
with him on the part of a haughty aristocracy. 

Brabantio, on coming up with Roderigo and officers, at once 
attempts to arrest the Moor on the ground that he had practiced 
upon his daughter with spells and witchcraft ; for the Magnifico, 
who sees the whole occurrence with eyes of family pride, cannot 
comprehend how his daughter could thus deceive him and bring, 
by her discreditable marriage, such disgrace upon her connections, 
unless she had been placed under the influence of drugs and 
charms. The Moor, though a high officer in the service of the 
State and professing Christianity, was, after all, in the eyes of 



596 OTHELLO. 

Brabantio but a mercenary adventurer, of infidel race, and more 
or less nearly connected — no matter for the degree — with a race 
of bondmen, in fact, but little better than a pagan and a blacka- 
moor. In a State like Venice, the policy of which was to entrust 
the command of its armies to foreigners, a soldier, like Othello, 
of great military experience and ability, might be taken into its 
service, and such a man might be received into the family circle 
as a guest, who had seen much and had much to relate, but the 
thought was not to be tolerated that, however high his personal 
character or the office which he might temporarily hold, he should 
be permitted to mingle his ignoble strain with the bright blood 
of a Venetian senator. Brabantio keenly feels the disdain with 
which his fellow-nobles will look upon the alliance, and 

" That what ? s to come of his despised time 
Is nought but bitterness." 

He, therefore, thus vehemently and contemptuously addresses 
Othello ; — 

" O thou foul thief, where hast thou stow'd my daughter ? 
Damn'd as thou art, thou hast enchanted her : 
For I '11 refer me to all things of sense, 
If she in chains of magic were not bound, 
Whether a maid so tender, fair and happy, 
So opposite to marriage that she shurm'd 
The wealthy curled darlings of our nation, 
Would ever have, to incur the general mock, 
Run from her guardage, to the sooty bosom 
Of such a thing as thou ; to fear, not to delight? " 

And he appeals to public opinion, to the general estimation, 
with regard to the facts. 

" Judge me the world, if 't is not gross in sense 
That thou hast practis'd on her with foul charms," etc. 

After a short parley, however, Brabantio, learning that the 
Duke and Senators are in council, and certain that "his brothers 
of the State cannot but feel this wrong as 't were their own," 
hastens away to lay his grievance before them. 

" For if such actions may have passage free 
Bond slaves and pagans shall our statesmen be," — 

inasmuch as it would be putting, at least in the opinion of Bra- 
bantio, a black adventurer, like Othello, on a par with the rulers 
of the State. 



OTHELLO. 597 

But Brabantio arrives at a time most unseasonable for his pur- 
pose. The Senate is greatly agitated with the news of the medi- 
tated descent of the Ottomites upon Cyprus, and their sole depend- 
ence to repel the attack is upon the warlike ability of the Moor. 
Iago anticipated that this would relieve Othello from any severe 
censure for his abduction and marriage of Desdemona. 

" For I do know, the State, 
However this may gall him with some check, 
Cannot safely cast him : for he 's embark'd 
With such loud reason to the Cyprus war 
(Which even now stands in act) that for their souls 
Another of his fathom they have none 
To lead their business" 

This anticipation is fully realized. Any predisposition to take 
part with Brabantio as one of their class — and such a feeling is, 
at first, strongly manifested — is checked at once by reasons of 
State, and his charge falls upon cold ears. On the other hand, 
Othello's truthful and straightforward answer to the charge not 
only disposes of it, but wins the sympathies of the Senators. His 
speech is but a reflection of his clear and candid soul. 

" Oth. Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors, 
My very noble and approved good masters : 
That I have ta'en away this old man's daughter, 
It is most true : true, I have married her ; 
The very head and front of my offending 
Hath this extent, no more. Rude am I in speech 
And little bless' d with the soft phrase of peace ; 



And little of this great world can I speak 

More than pertains to feats of broils and battles ; 

And therefore little shall I grace my cause 

In speaking for myself: yet by your gracious patience, 

I will a round unvarnished tale deliver 

Of my whole course of love" etc. 

Then follows his celebrated address to the Senate, in which he 
relates how — by a circumstantial story of his life, of the dangers 
and disasters he had met with, and of the wonders he had soon — 
he had unintentionally enlisted the interest and awakened the 
pity of Desdemona, and that his own feelings, also, had unawares 
been caught by the interest he had excited ; and ho sums up the 
narrative in the following lines, which reduce the whole history to 
something like epigrammatic brevity : — 



598 OTHELLO. 

" She lov'd me for the dangers I had pass'd ; 
And I lov'd her that she did pity them.'' 

Thus we see that Othello wins Desdeniona's love by and through 
Speech, — not speech used in flattery or in admiration of her 
beauty and accomplishments, nor even in professing his own love 
and soliciting hers in return, but by speech as the utterance of the 
inward man, revealing incidentally and unconsciously, in a narra- 
tive of his life, a valor and nobleness of soul that fascinate a 
gentle and impressible girl, and unseal within her heart all the 
sources of her sympathy. This fact, made so manifest by Othel- 
lo's defense, should be a full answer to all those critics who, siding 
with Iago, either openly assert or slyly insinuate that Desde- 
mona' s preference for a black man was founded in gross taste or 
in a secret physiological love of contrast. That this love on her 
part is natural is attested by the Duke, who expresses his inter- 
est in the affair, though, be it observed, not without a dash of 
class feeling in his advice to Brabantio to make the best of a 
bad matter. 

" I think this tale would win my daughter too. 
Good Brabantio, 
Take up this mangled matter at the best," etc. 

Brabantio, however, appeals to his daughter. He cannot be- 
lieve that she will manifest such "treason of the blood" as to 
disavow his authority. But Desdemona corroborates Othello's 
story; whereupon her father, with a good grace but a broken 
h$art, yields up his " jewel " to the Moor. The Duke, who seems 
to have taken quite a liking to the lovers, desires Brabantio to let 
time "speak like himself" and attempts to console him with cer- 
tain paradoxical phrases, proving that the greatest grief is, after 
all, the greatest comfort, etc. (in fact admitting that Brabantio has 
very good ground, in general estimation, for sorrow at his daugh- 
ter's match), but the bereaved father readily shows that these are 
but empty and equivocal words, which have no relation to any 
inward reality. 

" These sentences, to sugar, or to gall, 
Being strong on both sides, are equivocal. 
But words are words. I never yet did hear 
That the bruis'd heart was pierced thro' the ear." 

The marriage of Othello and Desdemona is a perfect type of 



OTHELLO. 599 

wedded love. It is emphatically " the marriage of true minds," 
the love of soul for soul. It is the perfect reciprocity and sympa- 
thy of valor, honor, and manhood with gentleness, purity, and 
womanhood. Each finds for itself a complement in the other, 
and both combine in a union of spirit, sentiment, and mutual 
truth and trust, which bring as much of happiness and of Heaven 
as is ever vouchsafed to mortals on earth. Such a union is the 
object of the strongest human desires and the supreme form of 
the highest earthly good. 

Desdemona reveals to us the essential and unassailable purity 
of woman's love, — a love deep, fervent, single, unalterable. Mod- 
est and shrinking, — 

" Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion 
Blush'd at herself," — 

she had dwelt alone in the depths of her own heart. Her suitors, 
the curled darlings of her nation, with " their soft parts of con- 
versation " and their refined but effeminate manners, had never 
been able to engage her mind or draw her from her reserve ; but 
the heroic qualities of the blunt soldier, Othello, at once awaken 
all the admiration and enthusiasm of her woman's soul. Her 
love is so purely a sentiment, so refinedly spiritual, so exclusively 
moving from moral causes, that it disregards all disproportionate 
and untoward circumstances, — circumstances merely external in- 
deed, but which would have turned away from Othello the love of 
any maiden who had drawn her affection from a source less high 
and pure than an enthusiastic admiration of his chivalric charac- 
ter and the courtesy of his soul. For Othello is advanced in life, 
is of grave and serious thoughts and manners, is of foreign race 
and country, and, more than all, is black in complexion and all 
but repulsive in appearance ; and to give additional effect to this 
outward disparity — for it is the point in the play on which the 
plot chiefly hinges — the poet, if he has not departed boldly from 
historical accuracy and made the Moor an out-and-out negro, has, 
at least, suggested it to the imagination by drawing him with 
strong African features, and by dropping, here and there, expres- 
sions respecting his personal appearance, which greatly enhance 
the contrast between the "thick-lipped" Ck black Othello" and 
"the divine Desdemona ; " between his "sooty w complexion and 

" That whiter skin of hers than siioir, 
And smooth as monumental alabaster." 



/ 



600 OTHELLO. 

It is this extreme disparity that so bewilders Brabantio that he 
cannot conceive, gazing as he does through the intensest social 
and family pride, how his daughter — the daughter of a Magnifico 
— could, of her own volition, have lowered herself by the choice 
of such a husband, and thereby incurred " the general mock " 
and ridicule of Society. The deep truth uttered by the Duke to 
him, — 

" If virtue no delighted beauty lack, 
Your son-in-law is far more fair than black" — 

this, Brabantio is utterly blind to ; yet the wider this external 
disparity between Desdemona and the Moor, the more pure and. 
lofty does it prove her love, the more essentially true her union 
with him. And, in fact, this very incongruity is what justifies 
her course to Desdemona's own soul. She is conscious that the 
step she has taken is a bold one ; that her marriage with the 
Moor can never, by reason of the circumstances of the case, take 
place with the assent of her father and family ; that in following 
Othello she is leaving behind her her home, her friends, and all 
her previous prospects forever ; yet she points to the fact that she 
had overridden the impediments that stood in her way, and had 
taken her fortunes by assault, as it were, as a conclusive proof 
that her love for Othello was so part and parcel of her happiness, 
was so seated in her soul, was so hallowed and true, that it tri- 
umphed, and had a right to triumph, over all considerations of 
filial duty and social usage. 

" That I did love the Moor to live with him 
My downright violence and storm of fortunes 
May trumpet to the world : my heart 's subdu'd 
Even to the very quality of my lord ; 
I saw Othello's visage in his mind ; 
And to his honours and his valiant parts 
Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate." 

Nor is Othello's love for Desdemona but a little less lofty. 
His trust is boundless ; he desires " to be free and bounteous to 
her mind," and although Desdernona' s sweetness and beauty have 
such an attraction for his sensuous nature that they seem almost 
to intoxicate him, he is the least in the world of a voluptuary. 

This love, so sanctified by virtue and honor, so strong in con- 
scious rectitude, so secure in mutual trust, and so imperative in its 
obligations that it braves a father's wrath and public opinion and 



OTHELLO. 601 

seems to throw down the glove to any force or disposition in So- 
ciety to cavil at it, disturb it, or assail it, originates, as we have 
seen, in Speech, or as Iago grossly perverts it, " in bragging and 
telling fantastical lies ; " and the problem is whether the honor 
of the Moor, resting, as it does, upon a personal pride and the 
world's opinion, is so solid a virtue that 

" The shot of accident nor dart of chance 
Can neither graze nor pierce it," — 

and whether Desdemona's purity is so shielded by its own good- 
ness or has so many " thousand liveried angels to lacquey it" that 
she may safely follow the inspirations of her love in spite of pa- 
rental displeasure and the frowns of the world ; or whether there 
is not in this honor resting on opinion a weakness and conse- 
quently in Desdemona's trust in it an imprudence which will fur- 
nish a point so assailable that the evil influences that infest So- 
ciety shall in the end, and in the absence of all facts, be able by 
the use of mere empty speech — simulating the voice of opinion 
— to bring Othello, not only to distrust his wife, but through a 
sense of wounded honor absolutely to murder her. Every reader 
of Shakespeare knows how appallingly this problem is solved. 
Every reader must shudder when he reflects upon the power of 
Calumny, as illustrated in this play, and brings to mind the death 
and the agony worse than death that is pulled down upon these 
virtuous and lofty characters by the force of mere empty words 
when flowing from the poisoned tongue of slander. 

With regard to Desdemona, who has been severely condemned 
by eminent critics for her elopement and her deception of her 
father, it must be allowed that her course was a great error, to 
say nothing of the imprudence of contracting a mixed marriage 
and of defying public opinion ; but had she acted otherwise, it 
would have implied an experience and a knowledge of the world 
which she did not possess ; aside, however, from the peculiar cir- 
cumstances of her case, if we take the estimate of those who know 
her best, there can be no doubt of her surpassing excellence. Bra- 
bantio's deep paternal attachment, Cassio's respectful but enthusi- 
astic devotion, Iago's reliance upon her goodness to effect his 
schemes, -ZEmilia's defense of her purity with her life, even Kod- 
erigo's dim perception of her "blessed condition " and Othello's 
crowning testimony that if 



602 OTHELLO. 

" Heaven would make him such another world 
Of one entire and perfect chrysolite 
He 'd not have sold her for it," — 

all alike attest the profound impression the goodness of her nature 
makes upon others. Cassio says, " She is indeed perfection" and 
although this, in this instance, is spoken of her superb personal 
beauty, yet if charity is " the bond of perfection " she is entitled 
truly to the praise on that ground, for her distinguishing traits 
are charity towards others, zeal in their service, and ready forgive- 
ness of injuries ; and indeed she possesses that kind of perfection 
which is the crown of human character and of which Bacon speaks 
in his Essay on Goodness, saying, that if a man " have St. Paul's 
perfection, that he would wish to be an anathema from Christ for 
the salvation of his brethren, it shows much of a divine nature 
and a kind of conformity with Christ himself." This spirit Des- 
demona evinces, when, dying under her husband's hands, she de- 
votes her last gasp to the utterance of a lie, thus becoming an ana- 
thema from Christ, in order to shield her murderer from the con- 
sequences of his cruelty to her. iEmilia asks, — 

" Oh, who hath done this deed ? 
Des. Nobody — I myself, farewell; 
Commend me to my kind lord. Oh, farewell." 

Here she touches the summit of human nature, and reminds us 
of the divine utterance, " Father, forgive them, for they know not 
what they do." It is as near an approach to perfection as poor 
human frailty can make, and reveals a love that can only be ex- 
pressed by the antithesis of a lie prompted by divine truth. It 
has been justly said that the ancient and classical ideal is mascu- 
line ; it is one of strength, fortitude, unbending will and heroism ; 
but that the Christian ideal is feminine, which though not want- 
ing in passive courage, is made up of gentleness, meekness, pa- 
tience, humility, faith, and love. And surely, if love, faith, ser- 
vice and an infinite spirit of forgiveness can constitute practically 
a Christian character, then Desdemona is a model of such a one ; 
and if to these qualities be added gentleness -^ a peculiarly Chris- 
tian virtue and her particular distinction — together with grace, 
refinement, and the accomplishments proper to her high social po- 
sition, she may be looked upon as the all but perfect fruit of 
Christian civilization. 

On the other hand, Iago is a moral monster, an embodiment of 



OTHELLO. 603 

all that is false and slanderous in Society. The mean pride and 
envy that hate superiority and take refuge in detraction and con- 
tempt of all excellence ; the false friendship, hiding rapacity and 
malice, the insincere profession, the sneer at virtue, the whispered 
innuendo, the insinuated falsehood, the perverted truth, the hint, 
the lie, the invention, in short all the arts of calumny, are to 
be found in every social circle, from the smallest hamlet where 
busybodies give zest to their gossip with ruined character to the 
elegant circles of metropolitan fashion,. where the shaft of slan- 
der is pointed with wit or is winged from beneath smiles with 
which treachery and worldliness cover their malice. This spirit of 
defamation, this pride that tolerates no superiority, this envy 
and hatred of others merely for their virtue or their happiness, 
— in short, this diabolism of Society, scattered through many 
minds, appearing in one shape in one and in another shape in 
another, is concentrated and individualized in the character of 
Iago. In iniquity he rivals the devil so far as it is possible for 
human nature to attain such negative perfection. The main- 
spring of his action is envy, which, as Bacon says (Essay on 
Envy), " is the proper attribute of the devil," who is called "the 
envious man that soweth tares among the wheat at night," as it 
always cometh to pass that envy worketh subtilly and in the dark 
and to the prejudice of good " This, evidently, is Iago's method. 
His is that malignity which is set in action by any superiority in 
others, whether it be of condition, of rank, of moral character, 
happiness, or what not. The motives which he himself avows for 
his conduct are all common ones, such as slighted merit, wounded 
pride, revenge for wrongs received, jealousy, even lucre and the 
replenishment of his purse. True, the malice he displays is out 
of all proportion to any wrong supposed to be inflicted upon him, 
but such an inversion surely is neither unnatural nor improbable ; 
for who has not seen that slight and often unintentional injuries 
rankle deeply in a jealous bosom and excite the darkest malignity 
and hate ? 

And after all, Iago may not be so much worse than many who 
are met with in the walks of actual life ; for the world is full of 
little Iagos, and all the qualities that go to make up the character 
are but too common in the world's highways ; but he appears to 
be worse, — in the first place because we are allowed to look 
under his mask and see his real nature, which men of his cast in 



604 OTHELLO. 

actual life seldom permit us to do ; and, in the second place, be- 
cause he is equipped with the weapons that render his malevolence 
effective. He is a most skillful sophist, a voluble rhetorician, and 
a consummate liar ; and to these accomplishments he adds a pro- 
found knowledge of the human heart and a dissimulation that is 
impenetrable. Notwithstanding his devilish purposes, he passes 
all the while for a man exceptionally kind-hearted and true, and 
is believed to be animated in all his actions by love and honesty. 

With envy, his master motive, and guile, his potent instru- 
ment, Iago combines great pride of intellect and mastery of the 
minds of others. Without conscience and without sympathy, his 
intellect knows no law but its craving for intrigue and the indul- 
gence of scorn. All his views of life, of men, things, and princi- 
ples, are depreciatory. He despises honesty, but deems it politic 
to wear its garb. His gross and sensual mind degrades and 
pollutes everything that passes through it. Things most holy, 
breathed upon by his comment, become impure. With the keen- 
est insight into those around him, he finds nowhere anything but 
objects of disparagement and contempt ; the weak and vicious he 
uses for his sport and profit ; the lofty and pure he sneers at, and 
hates while he sneers. He sees that the Moor is noble and trust- 
ing ; his aim, therefore, is to torture him with suspicions and 
make him " egregiously an ass ; " he sees that Desdemona is good- 
ness itself ; his aim, therefore, is to turn her goodness into " pitch." 
Their happiness " he eyes askance, with jealous leer malign," as 
Satan eyed our first parents in Paradise, and he is determined to 
effect their ruin. "He will set down the pegs that make this 
music." The instrument he uses is calumny ; and his skill is 
shown in advancing his own interests at the same time that he 
destroys his victims, who all the while look to him for aid and 
advice as their dearest friend. In his genius for intrigue, in his 
malice, his guile, and the pursuit of his interests he may stand as 
a type of all the villains of all the novels ever written. And yet 
he seems the mouthpiece of indignant virtue. He can assume 
the tone of Christian charity and bind up the wounds (that he 
himself has inflicted in the dark) with expressions of brotherly 
love and sympathy ; and at other times can affect the boon com- 
panion with gayety and song as a mask for the most villainous 
treachery. 

His wit is caustic and has no laugh in it. When Desdemona, 



OTHELLO. 605 

while awaiting the arrival of Othello at Cyprus, in order to beguile 
the time, asks him " how he would praise her," his slanderous words, 
though pointed at the sex generally, and though taken by her for 
" old fond paradoxes," gleam around her like premonitory flashes 
from that black cloud of calumny which in the end is to strike 
her to the earth. " He speaks home" says Cassio. " I am no- 
thing," he says of himself, " if not critical," and it is almost the 
only truth that falls from his lips. It is the key of his character. 
His power lies in his consummate mastery of false words and 
sophisms. Under his gloss and interpretation the plainest facts 
change their aspect ; the most trivial circumstances warrant the 
guiltiest conclusions, and the whitest innocence looks u grim as 
hell." Such in broad outline is the dramatic concrete that the 
dramatist has furnished us of that envious, defamatory, diabolical 
spirit his analysis discovers inherent in human society. 

Iago is himself what he describes Cassio as being, " a knave, 
very voluble, a finder of occasions." And indeed, he reminds 
us of an observation of Bacon, who says : " If we diligently ob- 
serve, we shall find two different hinds of sufficiency in per- 
forming actions and managing business. Some can make an apt 
use of occasions, but plot or invent nothing of themselves ; others 
are wholly bent on their own plots, but cannot take advantage of 
accidental opportunities, either of which abilities without the 
other is very lame and imperfect." De Aug. Book VIII. ch. ii. 
Iago is an adept in each of these kinds of sufficiency, being 
quick to seize on every opportunity, and also exceeding fertile in 
inventing plots for the furtherance of his ends. 

Iago scarce ever speaks that he does not illustrate the empti- 
ness of words, either by the use of them or by pointing to the 
use of them in others. He lies to himself in soliloquy. In the 
first sentences he utters his pride and envy break out in sneers at 
Othello and Cassio — two of his antipathies — as being, both of 
them, dealers in verbiage. Othello's dignified bearing and self- 
respectful style he ridicules by describing him (in the interview 
with Iago's " mediators ") 

" As one, who loving- his own pride and purposes 
Evades them with a bombast circumstance 

Horribly Stuff' d with epithet* of war" — 

mere empty grandiloquence ; and Cassio's accomplishments as a 
soldier he scoffs at as — 



606 OTHELLO. 

" Bookish theorie 
Wherein the tongued consuls can propose 
As masterly as he : mere prattle without practice, 
In all his soldiership." 

So, on the other hand, always malicious, always defamatory 
and quick to draw false inferences, he describes his wife ^Emilia's 
silence as a piece of hypocrisy. Cassio has just received Des- 
demona, on her landing in Cyprus, with the most respectful gal- 
lantry, and turning to iEmilia, with freer manners, salutes her 
with a kiss, at the same time apologizing to Iago, who stands by, 
for the liberty he takes. That imperturbable gentleman only re- 
marks : — 

" Sir, would she give you so much of her lips 
As of her tongue she oft bestows on me, 
You 'd have enough. 
Des. Alas ! she has no speech. 
Iago. V faith, too much. 
I find it still when I have list to sleep. 
Marry, before your ladyship I grant 
She puts her tongue a little in her heart 
And chides with thinking." 

The full extent, however, of Iago's power over false words and 
constructions is not exhibited until he comes to tell and act the 
stupendous lie by which he breaks down Othello's trust in Desde- 
mona's purity and love. To take the silly Roderigo in hand and 
twist him around his finger, to strip him of his money, to debauch 
and to demoralize him, and drive him on even to attempt an 
assassination, is to Iago but a pastime that in no degree taxes 
his powers ; but to transmute the high-souled Moor into his own 
likeness, to shake his noble, trusting nature with doubts of the 
wife he loved so deeply, to convert his faith in her purity into a 
belief that she was a " public commoner " of Venice, to madden 
him with a sense of wounded honor and love betrayed until he 
shall deem it his duty to take her life with his own hands as an 
atoning sacrifice to his sullied name and the world's opinion, is a 
task of far greater difficulty. But Iago, the consummate master 
of intrigue and calumny, has the requisite ability and training to 
overcome all difficulties. Nay more, out of Desdemona's goodness 
he will " make the net that shall enmesh them all." His skill 
will convert her most innocent words into self-defamation, and 
drive the Moor mad by means of the very qualities that should 



OTHELLO. 607 

win his love. Nor is the mere gratification of his pride in the 
wretchedness, the humiliation, and ultimate ruin of his victims a 
sufficient satisfaction for the exertion of his abilities ; he must 
also advance his worldly interests. He, therefore, adds to his 
scheme the supplanting in office of Cassio, for whom he enter- 
tains a characteristic hatred, for that 

" He hath a daily beauty in his life 
That makes him ugly." 

Iago clearly perceives that any abrupt charge against Desde- 
mona would have no weight with Othello. He therefore begins, 
as Calumny always does, with small beginnings ; he drops a hint. 
But even for this he prepares the ground with elaborate care. 
Knowing that the Moor is the soul of honor, who considers the 
essence of truthfulness to consist in an exact conformity of the 
speech with the internal thought, Iago begins, by way of induc- 
tion as it were to his lie, with creating a belief in Othello that he 
has a thought or a certain something in his mind which he could 
communicate if he would, but which a friendly consideration for 
Othello forbids him from uttering. It is observable that Iago 
arouses Othello's suspicions, in the first instance, by throwing 
back upon him his own words, which seem to have become loaded 
with slander by the mere fact of having passed his lips. As well 
known as this scene is, it may be necessary for the clearer expo- 
sition of Iago's method in lying to quote a few lines. 

" Iago. My noble lord — 
Oth. What dost thou say, Iago ? 
Iago. Did Michael Cassio, when you woo'd my lady, 
Know of your love ? 

Oth. He did from first to last ; why dost thou ask ? 
Iago. But for the satisfaction of my thought ; 
No farther harm. 
Oth. Why of thy thought, Iago ? 

Iago. I did not think he had boon acquainted with it. 
Oth. O yes ; and went between us very oft. 
Iago. Indeed ? 

Oth. Indeed ! ay, indeed. Discern'st thou aught in that ? 
Is he not honest ? 
Iago. Honest, my lord ? 
Oth. Honest f ay, honest. 
Iago. My lord, for aught I know. 
Oth. What dost thou think f 
Iago. Think, my lord ? 






608 OTHELLO. 

Oth. Think, my lord ! By heaven, he echoes me 

As if there were some monster in his thought 

Too hideous to be shown. Thou dost mean something : 

I heard thee say but now ' thou lik'st not that,' 

When Cassio left my wife. What didst not like ? 

And when I told thee he was of my counsel 

In my whole course of wooing, thou cry'dst indeed ? 

And didst contract and purse thy brow together 

As if thou then hadst shut up in thy brain 

Some horrible conceit. If thou dost love me 

Show me thy thought. 

Iago. Why, then, I think Cassio 's an honest man. 

Oth. Nay, yet there *s more than this.: 

I pray thee speak to me as to thy thinkings, 

A s thou dost ruminate ; and give the worst of thoughts 

The worst of words." 

Othello's mind being thus prepared for the reception of the 
first germ of calumny, Iago lets fall, by way of friendly warning, 
his suspicion that there is an over-intimacy between Cassio and 

Desdemona, 

" I speak not yet of proof . 
Look to your wife ; observe her well with Cassio ; 
Wear your eye thus ; not jealous nor secure. 
/ know our country disposition well ; 
In Venice they do let heaven see the pranks 
They dare not show their husbands ; their best conscience 
Is not to leave undone, but keep unknown. 
Oth. Dost thou say so ? " 

With Othello, a comparative stranger in Venice, these words 
coming from Iago, a Venetian, who in Othello's opinion is ex- 
ceeding wise in this world's wisdom, have the greatest weight, and 
at once command his attention. Iago follows this up with a still 
stronger blow : — 

" She did deceive her father marrying you • 
And when she seem'd to shake and fear your looks, 
She lov'd them most." 

This is like a flash of light into Othello's mind ; he knows that 
it is true, but does not perceive how sophistical is the inference 
Iago would draw from it, and the syllables which express his 
inward consciousness of its truth drop from his lips like weights 
of lead. 



" And — so — she — did." 






OTHELLO. 609 

Iago immediately proceeds to apply by another bold and spe- 
cious sophism, 1 the general truth he has enunciated with regard to 
the loose and hypocritical manners of his countrywomen, to the 
particular case of Desdemona, and having fairly lodged his 
slander in Othello's mind, he returns to rivet the point on which 
his whole success depends, that is, Othello's belief in his truthful- 
ness. 

" I hope you will consider what is spoke 

Comes from my love: but I see you are mov'd. 

I am to pray you not to strain my speech 

To grosser issue, nor to larger reach 

Than to suspicion. 

Oth. I will not. 

Iago. Should you do so, my lord, 

My speech would fall into such vile success 

As my thoughts aim not at." 

It is noteworthy that though no "practices of cunning hell" 
operated, as Brabantio supposed, to bring about the match be- 
tween Othello and Desdemona, they are now in full exercise to 
destroy it. Othello's noble mind revolts at the poison with which 
Iago would contaminate it. 

" I do not think but Desdemona 's honest." 

Still he cannot throw it off ; the mistrust that Iago has implanted 
comes back. 

" And yet, how nature erring from itself" — 

a remark, that Iago, speaking the voice of a skeptical and cen- 
sorious Society, seizes upon and expands, thereby echoing the 
thoughts and almost the words of old Brabantio in his bereave- 
ment, — 

" Ay, there 's the point ; as, to be bold with you, 
Not to affect many propos'd matches 
Of her own clime, complexion, and degree 
Whereto we see in all things nature tends ; 
Foh ! oue may smell in such a will most rank, 
Foul disproportion, thoughts unnatural,'' etc. 

Now, for the first time, begins with Othello the torture of 
doubt. Brabantio's warnings could not shake his faith, Eago'a 
first hints had been rejected as groundless, but now that this ques- 

1 Iago's favorite form of fallacy is what logicians call " an undistributed middle," 
or assuming that to be true of a whole class which IS true only of a part. 
39 



/ 



610 OTHELLO. 

tion of personal disadvantages and of the disproportionateness of 
the match between himself and Desdemona has been brought 
home to him, as interpreted by the voice of Society, and as argu- 
ing pretty conclusively the baseness instead of the purity of his 
wife, Othello staggers under the blow. From this time forth, 
though he has returns of fondness, the current of his thoughts 
sets steadily towards a conviction of Desdemona's utter worthless- 
ness. This brings with it a storm of passion, which Iago, who is 
ever at Othello's side, watching the change that is coming over 
him under the influence of his poison, is obliged to summon all 
his coolness, skill, and courage to withstand. The Moor requires 
" the ocular proof," but Iago shows from the nature of the case 
— and in so doing kindles in the imagination of the Moor the 
grossest associations — that this is impossible. 

" Where 's satisfaction ? 
It is impossible, you should see this. 



And yet, I say 
If imputation and strong circumstances, 
Which lead directly to the door of truth, 
Will give you satisfaction, you may have it." 

And, again, in his agony of mind, Othello demands a " living 
reason " that " his wife 's disloyal." An ordinary liar, under such 
circumstances, would have invented or mentioned something as 
having taken place, under his observation, between Cassio and 
Desdemona, betokening a guilty intrigue between them ; but 
Iago, the spirit of calumny, which creates everything out of no- 
thing, disdains to effect his ends and work Othello up to madness 
with anything more solid or substantial than the emptiest of 
words and speeches. He, therefore, at once brings forward as a 
"living reason," the mattering s of Cassio in a dream. 

" Sweet Desdemona, 
Let us be wary, let us hide our loves," etc. 

And so well does he succeed in making Othello outstrip his sug- 
gestions, and draw the worst and falsest of inferences from his 
cunningly devised story, that although he pointedly tells him that 
this " was but a dream," the Moor insists that it denoted a " fore- 
gone conclusion," and bursts out with savage rage, — 

"I '11 tear her all to pieces." 









OTHELLO. 611 

But Society would not be sufficiently avenged upon Desdemona 
for her imprudent disregard of circumstances, were not circum- 
stances, most innocent and trifling in themselves, made to aid in 
affecting her ruin. Iago, the master of imposture and false 
appearance, is, of course, a proficient in the perversion of circum- 
stances. The loss of the handkerchief and the use Iago makes of 
it, and the lies he tells about it and their effect upon Othello are 
too familiar to be dwelt upon. With amazing skill Iago not only 
turns Desdemona's advocacy of Cassio's. suit against herself, but 
he even presses the vices of Cassio into his service and invests 
them with such a color in the eyes of Othello that they become 
proofs of the guilt of his wife. But his vilest lie is that of the 
confession of Cassio, who, as he alleges, like other knaves ad- 
mitted to favors, " cannot choose but he must blab." Iago, how- 
ever, does not venture upon so bold an assertion as this, until 
the " all-in-all sufficient " Moor, whose " nature passion could not 
shake," has been so racked with agony that he is as passive as a 
child in Iago's hands. This accumulation of seeming proof is too 
much for the balance of Othello's mind. Recollections of the 
handkerchief, his first gift to his wife, and by her bestowed, as he 
thinks, upon Cassio, Cassio's dream, and this last overwhelming 
confession of Cassio, all spun out of Iago's subtle brain, and 
made up of empty words without a shadow of fact to rest upon, 
press upon him simultaneously, so that in the conflux of thoughts 
— and of feelings conjoined with the thoughts — his mind can fix 
on no one notion distinctly, but is whirled in its eddy of passion, 
from one to the other, with so much rapidity that it can frame no 
one of them separately into language ; and his expressions, conse- 
quently, become fragmentary phrases and unmeaning, incoherent 
words : — 

"Handkerchief — confessions — handkerchief — to confess and be hanged 
for his labour, — First, to be hanged and then to confess, — I tremble at it, — 
Nature would not invest herself in such shadowing passion without some in- 
struction. " 

But amid this giddiness and bewilderment, he is conscious that 
he is uttering only a jargon of words that give no intelligible 
expression to the emotions that distract his soul ; but ever honor- 
able, ever truthful, ever mindful, even in moments of greatest dis- 
traction, of giving exact utterance to his thoughts and feelings, he 
throws in by way of explanation : ww It is not words that shake me 



I 



612 OTHELLO. 

thus ; " and then goes on : * ; Pish — noses — ears — lips — is it 
possible — confess — handkerchief — oh. devil ! " and he falls into 
a trance. 

The progress of the change wrought in Othello's mind is as 
marked as the different stages of a disease ; and Iago. who is in 
constant attendance, administers his "medicines'* to destroy and 
not to cure. Had Othello's honor, however, been the i; solid 
virtue " invulnerable by chance or accident, which is attributed 
to him. and which he himself believes it to be, he would have 
been beyond Iago's machinations. It has been made a question 
whether Othello kills his wife for jealousy and a spirit of revenge, 
or whether, rising above so ignoble a passion, he offers her life as 
a sacrifice to his wounded honor. It seems pretty clear that he 
fell alternately under the influence of both motives. His thirst 
of revenge was proportionate to the wrong done him. and this in 
turn is measured by the depth of his love and the intensity of his 
sentiment of honor. As this question seems to have a bearing 
upon the philosophical meaning of the play, it may be of interest 
to examine briefly the growth of passion in Othello's mind. 

"When the possibility of Desdemona's untruth is first presented 
to him. and his mind is as yet uncontaminated by Iago's gloss of 
the circumstances of his marriage, he looks forward to a course of 
conduct consistent with the highest ideal of honor and manhood. 
He will first satisfy himself of the truth of the charge, and if she 
prove guilty he will repudiate her as unworthy of further thought. 
He says : — 

" No, Iago : 
I'll see before I doubt : when I doubt, prove : 
And on the proof ] there Is no more but this : 
Away at once with love or jet 

And again, after he has been stirred more deeply and his sus- 
picions have grown stronger, he still can say. though with obvious 
-ion : — 

u If I do prove her haggard. 
Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings. 
I'd 9 and let her down the wind, 

fortune. 9 * 

The tide of feeling is evidently rising, but there is as yet no 
'ii of blood, no fury, no black thoughts of revenge. He is 
still the man of "perfect soul." Secure in his own high char- 
acter, he can shake off any disgrace she can bring upon him with- 
out its soiling his honor. 



o 



OTHELLO. 613 

But this is a strain of conduct too lofty for even Othello's 
strength of soul to maintain. His honor, though in the main of 
pure metal, is like his love and like all things human ; it has its 
alloy, its imperfections. Honor partakes of man's mixed nature 
and shows a true and a false side. In Othello it shines as devotion 
to duty, loyalty to truth, high aspiration to win name and fame by 
great service, but these noble qualities are mingled with a personal 
pride and a self-esteem which will brook no disgrace and which 
adopts that code, sanctioned by popular sentiment, which enjoins 
a bloody revenge for dishonor and gilds the act with the specious 
name of Duty. Here is the crack in Othello's " solid virtue," 
the flaw in his " perfect soul," which give entrance to the prompt- 
ings of the passions. But for this imperfection Iago's suggestions 
would have fallen harmless. Yet this honor is so clever a coun- 
terfeit of true virtue that it disdains even life as the price of the 
loss of it. It is, however, but the creature of Opinion and is 
allied with all that is savage in man. Iago, therefore, by playing 
upon this sentiment through Othello's fears of a sullied name, 
and of the scorn of the world, goads him on to a loss of his self- 
government ; his slumbering passions start to life, and gaining 
strength as proofs accumulate, at last burst forth with volcanic 
energy. From the high-minded Christian gentleman and soldier, 
obedient to every law of the State and every summons of duty, 
he becomes the dupe of imagination and passion, and is converted 
for the time to a barbarian thirsting for blood. The transition is 
emphatically marked. 

" Now do I see 't is true. Look here, Iago ; 
All my fond love thus do I blow to Heaven : 
'Tis gone. 

Arise, black vengeance, from the hollow hell ! 
Yield up, love, thy crown and hearted throne 
To tyrannous hate ! Swell, bosom, with thy fraught, 
For 't is of aspicks' tongues. 
Iago. Pray, be content. 
Oth. Oh, blood, blood, blood ! " l 

This transition from the sway of reason to that of passion, from 
civility to barbarism, is more marked in Othello from his belong- 
ing to a barbaric race ; and this again makes him a better type, 

a more conspicuous instance, as Baoon calls it, of that savagvness 
1 Othello, Act. III. So. 8, Knight's Shahpere, 



614 OTHELLO. 

of nature, which, few men have ever received sufficient culture 
wholly to eradicate. 

Othello's cry for vengeance clearly shows that jealousy has 
aroused all the latent ferocity of his African blood, but the par- 
oxysm is too violent to be durable; and indeed it is a proof of 
Othello's nobility of nature, and of his freedom from low sus- 
picions, that when he next reenters with Iago — who is even then 
busy fanning the fires of his passions — he has forgotten, or at 
least has overlooked the incident of the handkerchief, which had 
previously been the chief incentive of his wrath. It is not until 
Iago's direct mention of it that he recalls it, and says : — 

" By Heaven, I would most gladly have forgot it. 
Thou saidst — oh, it comes o'er my memory, 
As doth the raven o'er the infected house, 
Boding to all — he had my handkerchief." 

Iago sees the necessity of adducing cumulative proofs, which 
he does with so much skill — converting every chance and circum- 
stance into a plausible piece of evidence — that a fixed convic- 
tion of Desdemona's guilt is produced in Othello's mind. He is 
brought to believe that his wife is a wily wanton devil, versed in 
all manner of deceit and wickedness. This " strong conception 
that he does groan and choak withal " seems to justify his course 
to his own mind, for honor and duty seem to be enlisted in the 
cause of revenge, — - a moral confusion that can only arise from 
that false sentiment inculcated by Society, which pronounces the 
murder of his wife a necessary vindication of his honor. Othello 
knows well the strength and impetuosity of his own nature ; and 
on the night of the fracas on the court of guard, his words imply 
the great self-restraint he is obliged to impose on his feelings. 

" Now, by Heaven, 
My blood begins my safer guides to rule ; 
And passion, having my best judgment collied, 
Assays to lead the way." 

The discipline of years, however, has rendered him strong 
against all ordinary impulses of his passions, and he has the ut- 
most confidence in his own self-government. It is his boast to 
the Senate that neither pleasure nor passion can divert him from 
the performance of duty or impair his ability for business. 

" When light- wing'd toys 
Of feather 'd Cupid foil with wanton dulness 



OTHELLO. 615 

My speculative and active instruments, 

That my disports corrupt and taint my business, 

Let housewives make a skillet of my helm, 

And all indign and base adversities 

Make head against my estimation." 

But at the time he utters this proud expression of self-reliance, 
he had had no experience of those lower depths of feeling which 
were soon to be revealed to him in bis own soul. He — so sensi- 
tive to honor, so loyal to truth — knew nothing of the agony of 
believing worthless, vile, and polluted that which he had cherished 
and worshiped as pure, and which he loves with a love to which 
all other ends and objects had become subordinate, — which, being 
lost, the occupation of his life is gone. Jealousy, when springing 
from a betrayal of wedded love, and particularly when this love 
is excited by uncommon personal beauty and has any consider- 
able element of animal appetite blended with it, is of a double 
nature, being a mixture of love and hate, and passionately seeks 
to kill what it as passionately loves, rather than endure its pos- 
session by another. It consequently draws after it a throng of 
varied and conflicting emotions, such as rage, scorn, admiration, 
abhorrence, loathing, pity, grief, tenderness, hate, revenge, — all 
which sweep in rapid succession through Othello's soul with a 
force that overbears all resistance. His " active instruments," 
that is, his senses and physical powers of action, of which he was 
so confident, are so far overmastered by the emotions excited by 
the alleged confession of Cassio, that he loses his senses and falls 
to the ground in a trance ; and his " speculative " faculties are so 
unfitted for business and are so distracted by outbreaks of pas- 
sion that he is scarce able to read the letter which the Senate has 
sent him on public affairs. A gradual degradation and loss of 
tone creep over the high-souled Moor under the influence of Iago's 
poison, and he becomes so far debased as to forget Desdemona's 
sex and his own manhood, and to strike her a blow while giving 
an audience to Ludovico, the Venetian ambassador ; at the same 
time driving her with contemptuous language from his presence. 
Ludovico looks on in astonishment and desires Othello to call 
her back ; and in the remarks which ensue, the struggle between 
reason and passion, between the better and the worser side of 
the semi-barbarian is marked, on the one hand, by the words of 
courtesy and of business addressed to Ludovico, and on the other, 



/ 



616 OTHELLO. 

by the fierce ejaculations of passion which he hisses forth to Des- 

demona. 

" Ay, you did wish that I would make her turn : 
Sir, she cau turn, and turn, and yet go on, 
And turn again ; and she can weep, sir, weep ; 
And she 's obedient, as you say, — obedient, — 
Very obedient ; proceed you in your tears, — 
Concerning this, sir. — well painted passion ! 
I am commanded home : Get you away ; 
I'll send for you anon. — Sir, I obey the mandate, 
And will return to Venice. Hence, avaunt ! 
Cassio shall have my place. And, sir, to-night 
I do entreat that we may sup together, — 
You are welcome, sir, to Cyprus. — Goats and monkeys ! " 

Ludovico very naturally asks, " Are his wits safe f is he not 
light of brain ?" — a pungent commentary on the assurance with 
which this cool-headed and dignified soldier once ridiculed any 
possible dereliction of duty, through passion on his part, by pro- 
fessing a readiness in such a case to give up to housewives " for 
a skillet " his helm or badge of soldiership. 

It should be noted that Desdemona's personal beauty — and 
it may be gathered from the dialogue that this was of the most 
voluptuous cast — never loses its power over the Moor's sensuous 
nature ; and it is this grosser element in his love that supplies 
fuel to his jealousy, and gives Iago access to the lower side of 
his nature. In the midst of the bitterest invective, Othello can 
stop to say : — 

" O thou weed, 
Who art so lovely fair and smell'st so sweet 
That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne'er been born ! " 

He even fears that her charms may unsettle his resolution to 
put her to death. He says to Iago, " Get me some poison, Iago, 
this night ; 1 11 not expostulate with her, lest her body and 
beauty unpromde my mind again." But Iago has no intent that 
his victim shall resort to any such refinement as poison to exe- 
cute his design. He will not be satisfied unless he can debase 
the lofty Moor to the very depth of brutality, reminding us of 
those serpents in the dreadful bolgia, which caused those they 
stung and empoisoned themselves to become serpents. Appeal- 
ing, therefore, to Othello's sense of justice, the better to beguile 
him, he says : " Do it not with poison ; strangle her in her bed, 
even the bed she hath contaminated." This suggestion, brutal 



OTHELLO. 617 

as it is, falls in with the feeling which Othello cherishes, and 
which lies back of all his whirl of passion, that it is his Duty 
to put Desdemona to death as a just and proper sacrifice to the 
opinion of the world as well as to desecrated love and wounded 
honor. He therefore answers : " Good, good ; the justice of it 
pleases; very good." This perverted sense of duty tends to 
invest his meditated deed with a dignity that conceals its atrocity 
from his own eyes. "She must die," he says, " else she'll be- 
tray more men" And he enters the fatal chamber with an air 
of solemnity, as if he had been deputed to execute justice upon 
some high-condemned criminal. This elevation of sentiment and 
calm judicial deportment leave room, also, for his better nature to 
come into play. He allows his love for her to break forth again ; 
her beauty and her sweetness, as he had feared, almost disarm 
his purpose. " O balmy 'breath" he exclaims, " that doth almost 
persuade justice to break her sword" He kisses her, while she 
sleeps, again and again ; he softens even to tears, and deplores 
alike her fate and the necessity resting upon himself ; he likens 
his action to the chastening blows of heaven, which strike where 
they do love, and seems, in fact, to have raised himself in a spirit 
of self-sacrifice to the performance of a high moral purpose. She 
awakes and learns his terrible intent ; she denies vehemently the 
charges he makes of her loving Cassio ; she pleads piteously for 
her life, and begs that Cassio may be sent for ; but upon learning 
that he is slain by Iago at Othello's instigation, she sees that 
both Cassio and herself are the victims of some plot, and ex- 
claims, "Alas, he is betrayed and I undone" words innocent in 
the meaning of the speaker, but which are taken by him in a 
false acceptation, and as a confession of her guilt ; and mistaking 
also her tears as proofs of her love for her paramour, he is at 
once lost to all self-government, and, infuriated with jealousy, 
seizes the helpless lady and strangles her out of hand, — thus 
converting what he had intended as a solemn sacrifice to duty 
into a brutal and barbarous murder. 

In perpetrating this act Othello recedes from the ideal of 
Christian manhood as far as hell is from heaven. He is fain to 
call himself "an honourable murderer,' 9 claiming that "nought 
he did in hate, but all in honour." But JEmilia's oomment goes 
to the root of the matter, and is most pointed and instructive. 
In one bitterly sarcastic word she condenses her contempt for the 



Desde- 



618 OTHELLO. 

overweening self-estimation that held that the murder of Desde 
mona was necessary for the reparation of his wounded honor : — 

" O murderous coxcomb ! what should such a fool 
Do with so good a wife ? " . 

^Emilia, by her knowledge of life, furnishes a foil to the sim- 
plicity of Desdemona. She is a type of character which may 
be found in every social circle, — that of the disappointed wife. 
Her marriage with the loveless Iago has chilled her, and her 
experience has tinged with acrimony all her views of married 
life. She, like the others, is a compound of good and evil, of 
virtue and vice. Still she is good enough to love and admire 
Desdemona's goodness, and the energetic friendship she displays 
upon the discovery of the murder of her mistress would cause 
greater faults than hers to be treated leniently. She fully under- 
stands and appreciates Desdemona's sacrifices in marrying Othello. 
She sees in the circumstances of the match the true motives of 
Desdemona, and this knowledge gives pungency to her resentment 
at the " despight and heavy terms " Othello throws upon his wife. 
Yet she is one who would never have seen Othello's visage in 
his mind ; on the contrary, she evidently thinks him no beauty, 
and does not scruple to tell him, when he attempts to justify the 
murder of his wife on the ground that she was false, that " she 
was too fond of her most filthy bargain" iEmilia is clearly 
truthful : she dies vindicating Desdemona's conduct, and her last 
words are an example of the truth arising from the correspond- 
ency of the words with the thought : — 

" Moor, she was chaste ; she lov'd thee, cruel Moor : 
So come my soul to bliss, as I speak true, 
So speaking as I think, I die, I die." 

Of Cassio, even Iago admits that " there is a daily beauty in 
his life." He is honorable, generous, and brave, and, though 
stained with some youthful vice, he is guarded against any great 
debasement of morals by his deep reverence for purity and good- 
ness. Desdemona's beauty, both of character and person, call 
out all the chivalry of his nature, but his regard for her has not 
the slightest trace of passion ; it is a homage to her virtue, like 
" the worship the heart lifts above " as to something divine. 
When she lands at Cyprus he breaks but with genuine enthu- 
siasm, — 



OTHELLO. 619 

" O behold 
The riches of the ship is come on shore ! 
Ye men of Cyprus, let her have your knees : — 
Hail to thee, lady ! and the grace of heaven 
Before, behind thee, and on every hand 
Enwheel thee round ! " — 

and subsequently when she promises her aid in restoring him to 
office, and he says, -r- 

" Bounteous madam, 
Whatever shall become of Michael Cassio 
He 's never anything but your true servant," — 

he expresses not merely his gratitude for her kind offices, but also 
his service and devotion to her on the ground of her excellence 
and ladyhood. 

Cassio is directly related to the organic idea by his regard for 
his reputation. He lives in the opinion of the world; as his 
exclamations of grief and shame well prove, after he has been 
degraded from his office by Othello. 

" Cassio. Beputation, reputation, reputation ! oh ! I have lost my reputa- 
tion ! I have lost the immortal part of myself and what remains is bestial. 
My reputation ! Iago, my reputation ! " 

Having been entrapped by Iago into drinking to excess, he 
feels the deepest mortification that his conduct, and particularly 
his speech, had been unworthy of a gentleman and an officer. 

" Drunk and speak parrot ? and squabble ? swagger ? swear ? and discourse 
fustian with one's own shadow ? " 

No picture of Society illustrative of an imperfect civilization 
would be complete without the character of Bianca, the represen- 
tative of a class which seems to be the ineradicable plague-spot 
of all civilization. She is the antipode of Desdemona. Her quick 
jealousy, characteristic of her class, is the direct opposite of Des- 
demona's unsuspectingness. The difference between them is also 
strongly marked in their relations to circumstances. Desdemona, 
strong in her innocence and her rectitude of intention, disregards 
them, but Bianca's condition in life compels her to sway with the 
current. She holds her lover by a tenure too frail to exact any- 
thing. She says, — 

" 'T is very good. I must be circumstanced.* 9 

The leading trait of nearly all the personages of the piece is 



620 OTHELLO. 

thus seen to be a care and concern for character, honor, reputa- 
tion ; they live for the favorable opinion of Society, which they 
hope to attain by proving their goodness or sufficiency in the per- 
formance of duty. But the doctrine that grows out of man's 
desire to advance his character towards perfection, which practi- 
cally is effected by the pursuit of good under the form of duty, is 
moral knowledge or philosophy, which both determines the true 
nature of " the good " as well as the means of attaining it; and it 
so turns out that the views of the play-writer on this subject are 
identical with those of Bacon and the characters and situations of 
the piece can be used to exemplify Bacon's tenets. 

And first it may be remarked that the piece is so constructed 
as to place the subject of " duty " in the foreground, inasmuch as 
the play brings specially into view Man's relations to Society, that 
is, the offices and duties that grow r out of human intercourse ; and 
all the dramatis personce, with the exception of the Clown and 
the women, are officers, either civil or military, in actual service 
of the State. And this again has the additional effect of drawing 
a broad line between public and private duties. By reason of 
this feature of the play, it offers illustrative examples of Bacon's 
doctrine of " The Exemplar or Platform of Good " on the main 
division of which, into " Private or Self Good " and the "good of 
communion " or " Duty" he builds his system of moral know- 
ledge. On this subject he takes to task the philosophers for not 
being sufficiently simple and profound, and says that " if before 
they had come to the popular and received notions of virtue and 
vice, pleasure and pain and the rest, they had stayed a little 
longer upon the inquiry concerning the roots of good and evil 
and the strings of those roots, they had given in my opinion a 
great light to those questions which followed ; and especially if 
they had consulted with the nature of things, as well as moral 
axioms, they had made their doctrines less prolix and more pro- 
found ; which being by them in part omitted, and in part han- 
dled with much confusion, I will brief y resume ; and endeavor 
to open and cleanse the fountains of morality . . . for this will 
in my opinion reinforce the doctrine of the exemplar with new 
strength. 

" There is formed and imprinted in everything an appetite 
toward two natures of good ; the one as everything is a total or 
substantive in itself, the other as it is a part or member of a 



OTHELLO. 621 

greater body; whereof the latter is in degree the greater and 
worthier, because it tends to the conservation of a more general 
form. The former of these may be termed ' Individual or Self- 
^Good, ? the latter the ' Good of Communion.' Iron, in particular 
sympathy, moves to the loadstone, but yet, if it exceed a certain 
quantity it forsakes its affection to the loadstone, and like a good 
patriot moves to the earth, which is the region and country of its 
connaturals ; so again, compact and massy bodies move to the 
earth, the great collection of dense bodies ; and yet rather than 
suffer a divulsion in nature and create a vacuum, they will move 
upwards from the centre of the earth, forsaking their duty to the 
earth in regard to their duty to the world. Thus it is ever the 
case that the conservation of the more general form controls and 
keeps in order the lesser appetites and inclinations. This pre- 
rogative of the communion of good is much more engraven on 
man, if he be not degenerate ; according to that memorable 
speech of Pompey, when being in commission of purveyance for a 
famine at Rome, and being dissuaded with great vehemency and 
instance by his friends about him that he should not hazard him- 
self to sea in an extremity of weather, he said only to them, ' It 
is needful that I go, not that I live ; ' so that the love of life, 
which is the predominant feeling in the individual, did not with 
him outweigh affection and fidelity to the commonwealth." 

It is evident from Bacon's language that he regarded his doc- 
trine of ethical science as original with himself, or at least that 
such doctrine, as founded in a general law of nature, had been 
" omitted " or " handled with much confusion " by his predeces- 
sors ; yet taking the play as a model of practical life there will 
be found in the characters and in their motives, sentiments, and 
actions perfectly apposite illustrations of every branch and subdi- 
vision of Bacon's doctrine of " The Exemplar of Good." 

For instance, the superior claims of the good of the community 
over that of the individual are plainly admitted by Brabantio, 
who seeks to excuse his neglect of duty to the commonwealth on 
the ground of the overwhelming nature of his private affairs, 
which had left him no room even to think of what as a Senator 
he owed the public. 

" Duke. Welcome, gentle signior ; 

We lack'd your counsel and your help to-night. 
Bra. So did I yours : Good your grace, pardon me ; 



622 OTHELLO. 

Neither my place nor aught I heard of business 

Hath rais'd me from my bed • nor doth the general care 

Take hold on me ; for my particular grief 

Is of so flood-gate and o'erbearing nature, 

That it engluts and swallows other sorrows 

And it is still itself." 

The " good of communion," says Bacon, " respects and beholds 
society, which we may term Duty, . . . and which concerns the 
government of every man over himself. It is subdivided into 
two parts, whereof one treats of ' the common duty of every man ' 
as a member of a State ; the other treats of ; the respective or 
special duties of every man in his profession, vocation, rank, and 
character.' 

" To this part touching respective duty, do also appertain the 
mutual duties between husband and wife, parent and child, master 
and servant ; so likewise the laws of friendship and gratitude and 
the like." De Aug. Book VII. ch. 2. 

The rule of duty of every man in his profession and vocation 
as well as the paramount duty which he owes to the State, is 
directly referred to by Othello, when, seconding Desdemona's ap- 
peal to the Duke to be allowed to accompany her husband to the 
war, he disclaims the possibility of any interference of his own 
private good or pleasure with the performance of his public 

duties. 

" Oth. Let her have your voices. 
Vouch with me, heaven, I therefore beg it not 
To please the palate of my appetite, 



But to be free and bounteous to her mind ; 
And heaven defend your good souls, that you think 
I will your serious and great business scant 
For she is with me" etc. 

Othello, in his relations to the State, is the perfection of loy- 
alty and duty, and does not hesitate for an instant to sacrifice his 
individual wishes and pleasure (" passive good " in Bacon's sys- 
tem) to the public service. Though just married, he is called 
upon to depart upon a distant and dangerous expedition, to which 
he at once assents. 

" Duke. The Turk with a most mighty preparation makes for Cyprus : 
Othello, the fortitude of the place is best known to you : And though we have 
there a substitute of most allowed sufficiency, yet opinion, a sovereign mistress 
of effects, throws a more safer voice on you ; you must therefore be content to 



OTHELLO. 623 

slubber the gloss of your new fortunes with this more stubborn and boisterous expe- 
dition. 

Oth. The tyrant custom, most grave senators, 

Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war 

My thrice-driven bed of down. I do agnize 

A natural and prompt alacrity 

I find in hardness ; and do undertake 

These present wars against the Ottomites. 



Duke. The affair cries — haste, 

And speed must answer it ; you must hence to-night. 

Oth. With all my heart." 

Of the " good of communion," which comprises the discharge 
of Duty and a desire to benefit and serve others, Desdemona is 
an example throughout, if we except her breach of filial duty, 
which, however, she justifies fully to her own conscience. No- 
thing, according to Bacon (De Aug. Book VII. ch. 1), doth so 
" highly exalt the good that is communicative and depress the 
good that is private and particular as the Holy Christian faith." 
And Desdemona' s character, without having any special religious 
tone or coloring, embraces all the most distinctive elements of 
Christian excellence. In her the good that is communicative, as 
exhibited in love and service, shines forth in all its beauty. Not 
to speak of her devotion as a wife, we may advert to her faithful 
friendship and zeal to serve Cassio. 

" Before iEmilia here 

I give thee warrant of thy place ; assure thee 

If I do vow a friendship, I '11 perform it 

. To the last article : my lord shall never rest ; 

I '11 watch him tame, and talk him out of patience ; 

His bed shall seem a school, his board a shrift ; 

I '11 intermingle everything he does 

With Cassio's suit. Therefore be merry, Cassio, 

For thy solicitor shall rather die 

Than give thy cause away." 

Desdemona carries " the good of communion " to its extreme 
limit. Speaking of this kind of good Bacon says (De Aug. 
Book VII. ch. 1), in a passage similar to one already quoted from 
his essay on " Goodness," that " some of the elected saiuts of 
God have wished rather than that their brethren should not obtain 
salvation that they themselves should be anathematised and erased 
out of the book of life, in an ecstasy of charity and infinite feel- 
ing of communion." 



624 OTHELLO. 

In a like manner and spirit Desdemona dies with a lie upon 
her lips, thereby incurring a similar penalty. — or, as Othello 
says, " like a liar goes to burning Kdl" — in order that she might 
testify her love and promote the good of her husband, under 
whose murderous hands she is even then dying. 1 

u The knowledge concerning good respecting Society," Bacon 
proceeds to say, " (as well as that which respects Individual 
good) handles it not simply alone, but comparatively* whereunto 
belongs the weighing of duties between person and person, case 
and case, particular and public, present and future," etc. 

The weighing of duties between person and person is pointedly 
instanced in Desdemona's excusing her marriage to the Moor. 



*o^ 



u Brabantio. Come hither, gentle mistress ; 
Do you perceive in all this noble company, 
Where most you owe obedience ? 
Desdemona. My noble father. 
I do perceive here a divided duty: 
To you I am bound for life and education ; 
My life and education both do learn me 
How to respect you ; you are the lord of duty, 
I am hitherto your daughter ; but here 's my husband, 
Aud so much duty as my mother should 
To you, preferring you before her father, 
So much I challenge that I may profess 
Here to the Moor, my lord." 

In the case of ^Emilia there is also a weighing of duties be- 
tween what she owes to her husband and what she owes to her 
mistress and the public. Finding Desdemona murdered, and 
readily divining from the circumstances that her husband, Iago 
(who lays his command upon her to be silent and to return home), 
has instigated the deed, she insists upon speaking. 

1 The following is an historical instance of this " infinite feeling of communion : M 
T\ hen in 1535 the Charter House Monks (Carthusian) in London were called upon 
to take — under penalty of death if they refused — the oath of allegiance to Henry 
A IH. as Head of the Church, which they could not in conscience do. John Hough- 
ton, the prior, proposed to his fraternity that he should save their lives by offering 
himself as representative of the house and swearing falsely. His words are : " Me 
and the elder brethren they will kill ; and they will dismiss you that are young into 
a world that is not for you. If therefore it depends on me alone — if my oath will 
suffice for the house, I will throw myself for your sakes on the mercy of God. I will 
make myself anathema, and to preserve you from this danger I will consent to the 
king's will." Fronde. Hist. Vol. II. p. 345. 

The writer of Othello may weU have been acquainted with this fact. 



OTHELLO. 625 

" JEmilia. Good gentlemen, let me have leave to speak. 
'Tis proper I obey him, but not now. 
Perchance, Iago, I will ne'er go home," etc. 

Private, or Self-Good, Bacon divides into Active and Passive. 
The active is that which leads men to enterprises and pursuits, on 
the accomplishment of which they have set their hearts, and suc- 
cess in which is one of the highest gratifications ; for, as Bacon 
adds, " there is no man's spirit so soft and effeminate but esteems 
the effecting of somewhat he has fixed in his desire more than 
any pleasure or sensuality" 

The desire of "active good" prompts all laudable ambition. 
Othello draws a glowing picture of it in his address to the Senate 
(which need not be quoted), in which he gives an account of a 
life spent in travels, enterprises, and battles for the sake of grati- 
fying a love of adventure, and for the honor to be won by heroic 
deeds. It should be observed, however, that this kind of good 
must be pursued without doing injury to others (which is, per- 
haps, but seldom the case), and Bacon gives us the admonition 
" that this active individual good has no identity with the good of 
society, though in some case it has an incidence into it . . . for 
that gigantean state of mind which possesses the troublers of the 
world (such as was Lucius Sylla and infinite others in smaller 
model, who are bent on having all men happy or unhappy as they 
are friends or enemies) . . . this I say aspires to the active good 
of the individual (apparent good, at least), though it recedes far- 
thest of all from the good of society." De Aug. Book VII. 
ch. ii. 

Of these " infinite others in smaller model " who pursue their 
selfish and wicked aims for the purpose of making their enemies, 
or those they consider such, unhappy, Iago, who might say with 
Satan, " Evil, be thou my good," is a notable instance. He, how- 
ever, always affects the good of others and wears the mask of 
Duty, but he is the extreme example of Self-Good. His rule of 
action he states in giving Roderigo reasons for his following 
Othello. 

" I follow him to serve my turn upon him : 
We cannot all be masters, nor all masters 
Cannot be truly followM. 



In following him I follow but myself ; 
40 



/ 



626 OTHELLO. 

Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty, 
But seeming so, for my peculiar end," etc. 

And in his cynical way he sketches the two classes of character 
who pursue respectively the real and the apparent good : those 
who do their duty in their offices and vocations, and those who 
pursue their interest alone. 

" You shall mark 
Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave, 
That, doating on his own obsequious bondage, 
Wears out his time, much like his master's ass, 
For nought but provender ; and when he 's old, cashier'd : 
Whip me such honest knaves. Others there are, 
Who, trimm'd in forms and visages of duty, 
Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves j 
And, throwing but shows of service on their lords, 
Do well thrive by them, and, when they have lin'd their coats, 
Do themselves homage : these fellows have some soul, 
And such a one do I profess myself," etc. 

Iago softens the extremely disagreeable things he has to say to 
Othello about his wife by alleging that he is discharging the office 
of a friend, and is prompted by a sense of duty, or by love and 
honesty, which practically are but other names for duty. Thus 
when Othello declares that he is above jealousy, Iago says : — 

" I am glad of this, for now I shall have reason 
To show the love and duty that I bear you 
With franker spirit. Therefore, as / am bound, 
Receive it from me." 

And again he says : — 

" I am much to blame. 
I humbly do beseech your pardon 
For too much loving you." 

By this affectation of love and duty Iago gives point to the 
masterly outburst, half expostulation, half apostrophe, with which 
he parries the wakened wrath of Othello, who, tortured by Iago's 
insinuations beyond endurance, had seized the slanderer and dis- 
charged his rage upon him. 

" O grace ! O heaven defend me ! 
Are you a man ? have you a soul or sense ? 
God be wi' you ; take mine office. O wretched fool, 
That liv'st to make thine honesty a vice ! 
O monstrous world ! Take note, take note, O world, 



OTHELLO. 627 

To be direct and honest is not safe. 

I thank you for this profit; and, from hence, 

/ '11 love no friend, since love breeds such offence." 

And again : — 

" Oth. Give me a living reason she 's disloyal. 
Iago. I do not like the office, 
But sith I am enter'd in this cause so far, 
Prick'd to it by foolish honesty and love, 
I will go on." 

The " good " which Iago pursues is the intensest form of "Active 
Self-Good," which, in his case, takes the form of the gratification 
of his malignity by ruining the happiness of others and at the 
same time rising by their fall. 

Iago's pleasures are wholly intellectual. He cares nothing for 
the enjoyment of the sense, but so long as his brain is busy with 
his plots and schemes he is in the best of spirits ; and in this 
respect he exemplifies the following passage, in which Bacon com- 
ments on the superiority of the " active good." 

" In enterprises, pursuits, and purposes of life, there is much 
variety, whereof men are sensible with pleasure in the conception, 
progressions, rests, recoils, redintegrations, approaches, and attain- 
ings to their ends ; so as it was well said * Life without a purpose 
is unsettled and languid;' ' and in his Essay on Negotiating, he 
remarks : " In all negotiations of difficulty, a man must not look 
to sow and reap at once, but must prepare business and so ripen 
it by degrees" 

Iago teaches Roderigo the same doctrine and manifests the same 
keen enjoyment from the prosecution of his plans. 

" Iago. How poor are they that have not patience ; 
What wound did ever heal but by degrees ? 
Thou know'st we work by wit and not by witchcraft ; 
And wit depends on dilatory time. 
Does 't not go well ? Cassio hath beaten thee, 
And thou, by that small hurt, hast cashier'd Cassio ; 
Though other things grow fair against the sun, 
Yet fruits that blossom first, will first be ripe. 
Content thyself awhile. By the mass, 't is morning ; 
Pleasure and action make the hours seem short," 

The Self-Good which is called Passive is subdivided by Bacon 
into Good Conservative and Good Perfective, u whereof that of 
perfecting is the highest, for to preserve a thing in its existing 



628 OTHELLO. 

state is the less, to raise the same is the greater." This last looks 
to a real exaltation and advancement of man's nature and happi 
ness. 

" The good of Conservation consists in the reception and frui 
tion of that which is agreeable to our natures, which, though it 
seems to be the most pure and natural of pleasures, is yet the 
softest and lowest." 

And this latter good also receives a difference, for the good of 
fruition, or, as it is termed, pleasure (or comfort, content, etc.), 
is placed either in the sincerity of the fruition or in the vigor of 
it, the first being the result of equality or constancy, the other of 
variety and change. The pleasure derivable from variety or 
change is repeatedly and emphatically mentioned by Iago. See 
his argument to Roderigo, Act I. Sc. 3. 

The difficulty of securing constancy in fruition inspires the 
fear which throws its shadow on Othello's happiness on being re- 
united to Desdemona at Cyprus. 

" Oth. It gives ine wonder great as my content 
To see you here before me. my souVs joy ! 
If after every tempest come such calms 
May the winds blow till they have waken'd death 1 



If it were now to die 

^T were now to be most happy ; for I fear 
My soul hath her content so absolute 
That not another comfort like to this 
Succeeds in unknown fate." 

In Desdemona' s reply there is a wish for the "perfective good." 

"The heavens forbid 
But that our loves and comforts should increase, 
Even as our days do grow" 

And in the following lines we see that the wish is habitual with 
her for the attainment of the really perfective good. 

" Heaven me such usage send 
Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend." 

Roderigo's suit to Desdemona is an instance of the pursuit of 
the " Passive Good," while Cassio is divided between the Active 
and Passive, his relations with Bianca being an instance of the 
latter, and his suit to be restored to his office for the sake of his 
reputation of the former. 



OTHELLO. 629 

The play, therefore, apparently covers the whole ground of 
Bacon's doctrine of " the platform or essence of good," and is a 
"living model" which shows in its characters, their actions, 
thoughts, opinions, and sentiments the practical application of 
abstract and scientific truths, — thus clothing the dry bones of 
philosophy with the flesh and blood of dramatic life. 

But the pursuit of the Good, real or apparent, or, in less formal 
language, the prosecution of the plans and objects which men 
strive to attain, makes up the mass of human concerns ; and suc- 
cess in such pursuit is that which brings all the fruit, pleasure, 
and contentment of life. There is consequently a constant exer- 
cise of the mind in determining what is good and how to attain 
it ; what is evil and how to avoid it ; particularly so far as these 
questions concern the relations, plans, and conduct of men. For 
men use other men as instruments, and mould and work them 
by suits, solicitations, persuasions. This we see in the play ; each 
one of the characters has his suit to some other. But that a 
selection of an agent may be prudently made, it is necessary 
that men should be known and judged exactly as they are, which 
can only be done by weighing virtues against faults, and cor- 
rectly estimating their honesty, knowledge, skill, sufficiency. The 
best proof, however, of such ability is actual trial and experience, 
the proof of the senses ; the next, reputation or opinion, which 
last kind of proof is mere words, yet must in a great majority 
of cases be relied upon. And in the play this distinction is made 
in the judgments which the characters pass upon one another ; 
some are known practically for experienced men, others are mere 
theorists. And these judgments are not merely with regard to 
public or business duties, but extend to the conduct of all per- 
sons in every station, rank, or vocation of life ; as to husband and 
wife, parent and child, and the like. 

Iago places his hatred of the Moor on the ground that he had 
given no ear to his suit for the lieutenancy ; on the contrary, he 
had slighted his soldierly qualities, — 

"Of which his eyes had seen the proof 
At Rhodes, at Cyprus, and on other grounds 
Christian and heathen" — 

yet passing him by, had bestowed the office on Cassio, a mere 
theorist, — 



630 OTHELLO. 



" Who had never set a squadron in the field 
Nor the division of a battle knew 
More than a spinster, " 






whose soldiership, in short, was "mere prattle without practice. 

The " sufficiency " of Othello, in which the Senate places so 
much trust, is approved by actual service ; and to this also Mon- 
tano bears witness. 

"I have serv'd him, and the man commands 
Like a full soldier" 

So, too, Cassio builds his hope of Othello's escape from the 
storm on the known skill of his pilot. 

" His bark is stoutly timber'd and his pilot 

Of very expert and approved allowance." 

It is only, however, a very small part of our knowledge that is 
" approved " or certain, because derived from direct and personal 
observation. Of the truth of by far the greater part of it, we have 
only an " assurance," which amounting often perhaps to a moral 
certainty, is yet no more than a high degree of probability. With 
such "assurances" the play abounds. These apparent truths or 
" assurances " are derived from reasoning, that is, from inferences 
and proofs, which processes constitute the ordinary natural opera- 
tion of the reasoning faculty ; the mind being habitually employed, 
even in the most ignorant and illiterate, in assigning reasons for 
opinions or conduct, or in persuading and working upon others, or 
in inferring conclusions from facts and circumstances, according to 
what experience has taught to be true or customary in like cases. 
Of course, the accuracy or ability with which these processes are 
conducted will depend in a great measure upon the amount of pre- 
vious knowledge acquired. But they are the same in the most 
ignorant as in the most learned, and are exercised in the common 
affairs of life as it were, spontaneously. This mode of reasoning, 
however, which answers well enough for the ordinary affairs of 
life, is very superficial and gives rise to innumerable erroneous 
conclusions; for the sense is often imperfect or mistaken, and 
outward circumstances, which are all the sense can take note of, 
are wholly unessential, and may be attributed to various causes ; 
and be equally interpreted by charity or by malice, for which 
reason no conclusions should be founded on them until they have 
been subjected to the strictest examination. Yet it is precisely 



OTHELLO. 631 

such conclusions, drawn in this touch and glance sort of way, 
which men are ever using and appealing to as truths, in their 
attempts to persuade or convince others. And the poet, therefore, 
holding his mirror up to nature so as to reflect faithfully a pic- 
ture of Man in society, with his " imperfect pursuit of the Good," 
that is, of virtue and duty, and his consequent imperfect civiliza- 
tion, shows us his characters gathering and exchanging knowledge 
by adducing proofs or drawing inferences from the current cir- 
cumstances of the day, and particularly from the words and con- 
duct of their fellows, thereby causing the play to exhibit both the 
natural action of the reason and also the errors into which it is 
liable to fall through hasty judgments ; on which account the 
piece can be taken as a collection of varied examples to elucidate 
Bacon's strictures (laid down in his Art of Judging) upon the 
imperfection of the mind's natural method of concluding upon the 
perceptions of the sense, and the consequent necessity of adhering 
to some rule in the investigation of truth. But before adverting 
more particularly to the coincidences of the play with Bacon's 
doctrines on this head, it will be well to examine a few scenes in 
order to mark the ingenuity and skill with which the dialogue, 
w r hile developing the characters and carrying forward the business 
of the play, is so woven as continually to present some instance of 
the exercise of the judgment in drawing inferences and proofs 
from circumstances. 

The play opens with an inference made by Roderigo that Iago 
has deceived him in pretending enmity to the Moor, since the cir- 
cumstance of Iago's being acquainted with Othello's clandestine 
marriage proves that he is on the most confidential and friendly 
footing with him ; this inference Iago rebuts by pointing to the 
ill-treatment he has received at Othello's hands respecting the 
lieutenancy, and adds : — 

"Now, sir, be judge yourself 
If I in any just terms am affined 
To love the Moor." 

Brabantio, being called up at dead of night by the clamor 
of Roderigo and Iago, asks " the reason of this terrible sum- 
mons," and infers from time and place that Roderigo is mali- 
ciously disturbing his quiet, and therefore accuses him of rude and 
boisterous manners, but Roderigo alleges the flight of Desdemona 



632 OTHELLO. 

and his desire to give Brabantio knowledge of it as a sufficient 
excuse for his apparent rudeness. 

Sc. 2. Brabantio accuses Othello of having abused Desde- 
mona with " drugs and minerals," and appeals to the probabilities 
of the case as a sufficient proof of the charge. 

" Judge me the world if 't is not gross in sense, 
That thou hast practis'd on her with foul charms. 

... I '11 have it disputed on ; 
'T is probable and palpable to thinking," etc. 

Scene 3 is a council chamber, where the Duke and Senators 
are discussing the contradictory reports respecting the movements 
of the Turkish fleet, and endeavoring by sifting the circumstances 
to arrive at some conclusion with regard to the designs of the 
Turks. The dialogue is too long to quote ; it has no particular 
bearing upon the action of the piece, and seems introduced pur- 
posely as a pointed instance of conclusions derived from circum- 
stances interpreted by the light of experience. 

Brabantio enters and makes his charge against Othello of hav- 
ing corrupted his daughter by spells and medicines, and grounds 
his accusation on the fact that Desdemona could not in the na- 
ture of things have acted voluntarily. 

"For nature so preposterously to err 
(Being not deficient, blind, nor lame of sense) 
Sans witchcraft could not," etc. 

And again he refers to Desdemona's circumstances, " her years, 
her country, credit, everything," as proofs that she had not acted 
freely. 

" It is a judgment maim'd and most imperfect 
That will confess perfection so could err 
Against all rules of nature," etc. 

To which the Duke replies : 

" To vouch this is no proof 
Without more certain and more overt acts 
Than these thin habits and poor likelihoods 
Of modern seeming do prefer against him," etc. 

Othello answers the charge by stating that the only witchcraft 
he had used was the interest he had excited by a recital of the 
circumstances of his life, which, falling in with all experience and 
probability, disproves the accusation ; the Duke remarking: — 



OTHELLO. 633 

" I think this tale would win my daughter too." 

The Duke then makes use of certain paradoxes to console Bra- 
bantio, which are, of course, in keeping with the dialectical style 
of the piece. 

This is followed by Iago's speech to Eoderigo, in order to per- 
suade him to follow the wars in the hope of gaining the love 
of Desdemona, — grounding his argument on the circumstances 
attending her marriage to the Moor, and the mutability of the 
sex. 

Act II. Sc. 1 : Montano and gentlemen watching for vessels 
from the cape, and commenting on the great storm of the night 
before, infer the destruction of the Turkish fleet. 

" Mon. What shall we hear of this f 

2 Gent. A segregation of the Turkish fleet : 
For do but stand upon the foaming shore, 
The chiding billows seem to pelt the clouds. 



Mon. If that the Turkish fleet 

Be not enshelter'd and embay'd, they are drown'd ; 

It is impossible they bear it out" 

Besides the examples cited, which are the more prominent ones, 
the dialogue is filled in with many minute instances of proofs, 
arguments, and inferences so unobtrusive and spontaneous that no 
attention is attracted to their logical character, as, for instance, 
this inference from a salute on the arrival of a vessel : — 

" They do discharge their shot of courtesy, 
Our friends at least." 

And again : — 

" They give their greeting to the citadel : 
This likewise is a friend" 

These are the syllogisms of common speech, and belong to the 
natural action of the mind. 

The object here is to show that the dialogue of the play is a 
web of inference and proof from circumstance, — broken, it is 
true, here and there by passages illustrative of doctrines of Bacon 
other than his " Art of Judging," yet in the main argumentative 
throughout. 

Iago's " old fond paradoxes," which he invents in answer to 
Desdemona's request that he should praise her, are of course 
argumentative. 



/ 



634 OTHELLO. 

Act II. Sc. 3 : Iago naturally infers from the circumstance 
that Cassio, Roderigo, and the " three lads of Cyprus " have been 
drinking too freely, that it will be easy " to put Cassio in some 
action that will offend the isle." 

" If consequence do but approve my dream, 
My boat sails freely both with wind and stream." 

In this soliloquy — and in all his soliloquies — Iago discusses 
with himself his plans. All plans rest on a knowledge of causes 
and the necessary inference that certain causes will produce cer- 
tain effects. Iago throughout aims at the production of effects, 
and this he does by touching, as one profoundly skilled in human 
nature, those springs of action which are the causes of conduct. 

Othello ironically infers from the brawl on the court of guard 
that they had turned Turks. 

" From whence ariseth this ? 
Are we turned Turks and to ourselves do that 
Which heaven hath deni'd the Ottomites ? " 

Othello also argues the heinousness of Cassio's breach of dis- 
cipline from the circumstances of time and place. 

" What ! in a town of war, 
Yet wild, the people's hearts brimful of fear, 
To manage private and domestic quarrel, 
In night and on the court and guard of safety ! 
'T is monstrous." 

Act III. Sc. 3 : This great scene is professedly made up of 
inferences and proofs founded on circumstances. 

In the following lines, Desdemona refers to the loss of her 
handkerchief as a circumstance which might furnish a ground for 
dangerous inference. 

" And but my noble Moor 
Is true of mind and made of no such baseness 
As jealous natures are, it were enough 
To put him to ill thinking." 

The minutest circumstances are often relied upon to support 
the weightiest conclusions. Othello inquires of iEmilia what she 
has seen or heard that will imply familiarity between Cassio and 
Desdemona. 

" Did they never whisper ? nor send you out o' the way ? 
To fetch her fan, her gloves, her mask, nor nothing ? " 

^Emilia scouts the notion that Desdemona is untrue, and asks 
what circumstances can be alleged as signs of her guilt ? 



OTHELLO. 635 

" Who keeps her company ? 
What place? what time? what form? what likelihood?" 

The following is an instance of a non-significant circumstance. 
Desdemona says : — 

" Mine eyes do itch ; 
Doth that bode weeping ? " 

^Emilia replies : — 

" 'T is neither here nor there" — 
it is a circumstance that has no consequence. 

The foregoing examples are probably sufficient to show that 
the dialogue of the piece is, to a very great extent, made up of 
arguments and inferences based upon circumstantial evidence, — 
the one great instance of which is the proof alleged by Iago of 
Desdemona's guilt. 

Another point, however, should be remarked upon before leav- 
ing the consideration of the doctrine of " the Good," and taking 
up the mind's imperfect method of concluding, that is, the neces- 
sity of knowing evil as well as good. 

Bacon holds that a knowledge of evil is necessary for the 
protection of virtue. He says : " There belongeth further to the 
handling of this point touching the duties of professions and 
vocations, a relative or opposite, touching the frauds, cautels, im- 
postures, and vices of every profession. ... The managing of 
this argument with integrity and truth, which / note as deficient, 
seemeth to me to be one of the best fortifications for honesty and 
virtue that can be planted. For as the fable goeth of the basi- 
lisk, that if he see you first you die for it, but if you see him first 
he dieth ; so [is it with deceits and evil arts, which if they be 
first espied they lease their life, but if they prevent they endan- 
ger. So that we are much beholden to Machiavelli and others 
that write what men do and not what they ought to do. For it is 
not possible to join serpentine wisdom with the columbine inno- 
cence, except men know all the condition* of the serpent^ bis 
baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, 
his envy and sting and the rest, that is, all forms and natures of 
evil. For without this, virtue lieth open and unfcnced" Adv. 
p. 327, Boston ed. 

The want of this knowledge of evil is the great defect in the 
character both of Othello and Desdemona. The; both arc igno- 
rant of the world, and at the same time cherish a trust in others, 



/ 



636 OTHELLO. 

which though prompted by the truth of their own souls, yet lays 
them open and unfeneed against the most dangerous deceptions. 
Desdemona's purity is such that she is even ignorant of the exist- 
ence of some kinds of vice, and is like one of those of whom the 
Apostle speaks, as " wise unto that which is good and simple unto 
that which is evil." So far from being guilty of the sin alleged 
against her bv Othello, she does not believe that anv woman is 
or ever was guilty of such abuse. She says : — 

••' I do not think that there is any such woman." 

In her advocacy of Cassio's suit, likewise, she does not dream 
that her zeal can be looked upon as a proof of her fondness for 
him. And even after she has found that her solicitations have 
given offense — which would have opened the eyes of any woman 
not absolutely incapable of suspecting that she is suspected — she 
gives Cassio fresh assurances. 

••' So help nie every spirit sanctified,. 
As I have spoken for you all niy best 
And stood within the of his displeasure, 

What I can do I will, and more I 
Than for my$:W I dare'' 

This promise is one of those errors of goodness which Bacon, 
in his Essay on Goodness, speaks of : " Beware how in making 
the portraiture, thou breakest the pattern. For divinity maketh 
the love of ourselves the pattern, the love of our neighbour the 
portraiture." Desdemona breaks the pattern, for she unwittingly 
nuns herself in her excess of zeal for Cassio. 

Innocence so helpless as Desdemona's lies utterly unfeneed 
against envy and malice, and can find protection only in the con- 
fidence of a husband possessed of a knowledge of human nature 
so deep and subtle as to be able to discern her truth and self- 
sacrifice under all the duplicity of circumstance ; but alas ! 
Othello is but a little less simple and unsophisticated than Des- 
demona herself : and. indeed, it is felt and frequently remarked 
that Othello is too easilv convinced of Desdemona's orrilt. the 

ml © 

slightest inquiry about which would have brushed away at once 
Iago's fine-spun web of calumny. The dramatist, however, is not 
forgetful of this point, but gives it special attention and lays a 
foundation for the probability of his picture in the circumstances 
of his hero's life. 



OTHELLO. 637 

For although Othello has adopted Christianity, he is still Moor- 
ish, African, barbaric ; and it was a stroke of great dramatic skill, 
— and one, moreover, which shows the design of the poet — so to 
construct the action of the piece (of which in this respect there is 
not the faintest hint in the original novel) as to oblige Othello, 
in order to rebut the charges of Brabantio, to give an account of 
his career from boyhood up, for we are thus enabled to see in the 
antecedents of the character the sources both of its strength and 
its weakness. He tells us that 

" Since his arms had seven years' pith 
Till now, some nine moons wasted, they have us'd 
Their dearest action in the tented field, 
And little of this great world can I speak, 
More than pertains to feats of broil and battle." 

He is, therefore, a skillful and practiced soldier, and this quali- 
fication in connection with his high and heroic mould of mind 
gives him, barbarian as he is, a prominent standing with the 
Venetian Senate ; but outside of his peculiar field of thought he 
has no attainments ; his only education has been gained in " the 
tented field," but of " the great world " and of society, their hol- 
lo wness and intrigues, he has little or no knowledge, much less 
has he of scholastic training, or habits of analysis or methods of 
inquiry. 1 Men of well-disciplined minds are alert in detecting 
falsehood, if not in discovering truth ; they see at a glance the 
invalidity of an argument or the weak link in a chain of evidence. 
Of this kind of penetration, Othello has but little. Frank and 
truthful, he is as trusting and simple-minded as a child. He has 
retained and carried into manhood much of that credulity which 
is so beautiful as well as so useful in childhood, but which wears 
away as years bring experience of the world, until in old age it is, 
in most cases, replaced by skepticism and distrust. But Othello's 
life, remote from the haunts of men, has kept his feelings fresh 

1 Tacitus (Bacon's favorite historian) makes a similar comment OB the want of 
subtilty and nice discrimination in the minds of military men : — 

" Credunt plerique militaribus ingeniis subtilitatem deesse, quia eastrensis juris- 
dictio secura et obtusior ac plura maim agens oalliditatem fori non excreeat." De 
Vita Agric. ch. ix. 

This is rendered by Murphy : "The military mind trained up in the school of wax 
is generally supposed to want the power of nice discrimination. The jurisdiction of 
the camp is little solicitous about forms and subtle reasoning) military law is blunt 
and summary, and when the sword resolves all difficulties the refined discussions of 
the forum are never practiced." 



638 OTHELLO. 

and preserved his faith in human nature. He accepts implicitly 
the statement of any one who has gained his confidence, without 
a doubt of possible error or deception. Like most men of fine 
natures, who have led rough lives afar from cities and the arts of 
civilization, he sets a great value on that culture and knowledge 
of which the circumstances of his own life have deprived him. 
Of Iago's worldly wisdom and Desdemona's accomplishments he 
is emphatic in his admiration, but throughout the play, although 
he impresses us with his ability as a soldier and his faculty of 
command, he lets fall no deep reflection, makes no pregnant sug- 
gestion, utters no maxim of life. But inasmuch as he possesses 
a strong imagination, an active fancy, and ardent passions, his 
speech about the men and things which fall under his observa- 
tion attains a force and eloquence which looks like intellectual 
strength, and as such speech, moreover, is frequently adorned with 
imagery drawn from the strange and distant lands he has visited, 
it wears an air of general knowledge which veils his ignorance. 
But he is without the spirit of inquiry or the habit of investigat- 
ing truth ; in short, he is without learning, and hence he lacked 
one great element of civility, for, to quote the words of Bacon, 
" learning taketh away the wildness and barbarism of minds ; it 
taketh away all levity and temerity by copious suggestions of 
doubts and difficulties and acquainting the mind to balance rea- 
sons on both sides and to accept nothing but examined and 
tried:' 

Such being the credulity and simplicity of Othello's mind, it 
is quite natural that he should be convinced upon Iago's bare 
but consummately skillful statement — and that, too, without any 
examination into the facts — that Desdemona is unfaithful to him. 
He charges her with being false ; she very naturally asks, — it 
being the first time she has ever heard the accusation or suspected 
its existence, — 

" To whom, my lord ? with whom ? how am I false ? " — 

the very form of the questions showing her ignorance of his 
meaning ; but he, preoccupied and dominated by the " strong 
conception" of her guilt, or with what Iago significantly calls 
" his unbookish jealousy," makes no pertinent reply to these most 
reasonable questions, — a single word would have led to a full 
explanation, — but burying himself still deeper in his ignorance, 
only ejaculates : — 



OTHELLO. 639 

" O Desdemon, away, away, away ! " 

With such a want of the spirit of inquiry to deal with, Iago, 
that unrivaled player upon the chords of the human heart, has 
little difficulty in accomplishing his avowed purpose of making 
Othello " egregiously an ass." 

This result, morever, justifies ^Emilia's sneers, who, upon find- 
ing her mistress murdered, readily sees through the villainy, and 
heaps reproaches upon the Moor for his folly. 

"Ofool! Odolt! 
As ignorant as dirt ! " 

And Othello, himself, when his eyes are once opened to his rash 
and precipitate belief in Iago's story, has but one comment. 

"O fool, fool, fool!" 

The depth of error and ignorance into which Othello is plunged 
by his trust in Iago and his culpable negligence to inquire into 
the particulars of the charge against his wife, is put before us 
with a covert sarcasm, that is, provided the play is read for its 
philosophy and not merely for its poetry ; for, since to know truly 
is to know through causes, Othello, upon entering the chamber 
for the purpose of murdering one who, in fact, is perfectly inno- 
cent of all offense, is made to justify his act and show, at the 
same time the blindness of his mind, by saying, — 

" It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul. 
Let me not name it to you, ye chaste stars, 
It is the cause" 

It may be remarked that as by drawing Othello with the sim- 
plicity and ignorance of the semi-barbarian, — or to use his own 
comparison, of " the base Indian, who threw a pearl away richer 
than all his tribe," — the poet gives probability to the success of 
Iago's machinations, so, by portraying in all their grandeur the 
passions that lurk in his African blood, he emphasizes those quali- 
ties of human nature which are the source of the barbarism of 
Society. And furthermore, as by depicting Othello without learn- 
ing, and of no acquirements beyond his professional sphere, the 
poet renders him a better representative of a semi-civilization, so 
also by the same means he puts him forward as a type of the 
natural action of the mind unbiased by any soientifio method; 
and on this account he becomes a notable exponent of those errors 



640 OTHELLO. 

which Bacon is ever inveighing against, and which proceed from 
the innate propensity of the mind when left to its own action to 
draw rash and premature conclusions from a few and inadequate 
particulars. But let us quote a few passages from Bacon, which 
will set forth his views on this head in his own words. 

"The conclusions of human reason as ordinarily applied in 
matter of nature I call for the sake of distinction, Anticipations 
of nature as a tiling rash and premature" Nov. Org. Book I. 
Aph. 26. 

" That I call Anticipations, the voluntary collections that the 
mind maketh of knowledge, which is every man's reason. That 
though this is a solemn thing and serves the turn to negotiate be- 
tween man and man (because of the conformity and participation 
of men's minds in the like errors), yet towards enquiry of the 
truth of things and works, it is of no value.'' Of Interpretation 
of Nature, ch. xv. 

" For the winning of assent anticipations are more powerful 
than interpretations ; because being collected from a few in- 
stances and those for the most part of familiar occurrence, they 
straitway touch the understanding and fill the imagination" 
Nov. Org. Book I. Aph. 28. 

"In sciences founded on opinion and dogma . . . the use of 
anticipations and logic is good, for in them the object is to com- 
mand, assent to the proposition and not to master the thing." 
Nov. Org. Book I. Aph. 29. 

Quotations from Bacon pointing to the evils arising from men's 
severing and withdrawing their thoughts too soon and too far 
from experience and particulars, and giving themselves up to their 
own meditations and arguments, might be multiplied ad libitum. 
But the foregoing are sufficient to indicate how apt an illustration 
of this general error in the natural operation of the reason is 
found in the formation of Othello's judgments and opinions ; but 
— to be more particular — the condition of Othello's intellect 
makes him " an actual type and model by which the entire pro- 
cess of the mind is set before the eyes " with respect to those 
prejudices and rooted opinions which Bacon styles " The Idols of 
the Tribe," so designated because they are common to human 
nature, and which he says " have so beset men's minds that 
truth can hardly find an entrance." Of these idols, which are 
very numerous, — and by idols, Bacon, who sometimes through 



OTHELLO. 641 

exuberance of fancy is fantastic in his nomenclature, means illu- 
sions, fallacies, deceptions, — one class he describes as follows: 
" The human understanding, when it has once adopted an opinion, 
draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though 
there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on 
the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by 
some distinction sets aside and rejects, prejudging the matter to a 
great and pernicious extent in order that its former conclusions 
may remain inviolate" Nov. Org. Book I. Aph. 46. 

This is an exact description of Othello's mental condition. 
Like the great mass of mankind, having once adopted an opinion, 
which he does from a few particulars and without examination 
into the facts, he clings to it in spite of every evidence to the 
contrary. He draws all circumstances, all appearances, almost 
every word he hears, "to support and agree with it." For in- 
stance, he inquires of ^Emilia whether she has noted any suspicious 
circumstances implying Desdemona's guilt, and although ^Emilia 
gives the clearest and most unequivocal testimony to the blame- 
lessness of Desdemona, he " rejects " and " sets it aside " as un- 
trustworthy because it conflicts with his preconceptions. 

" She says enough ; — yet she 's a simple bawd 
That cannot say as much. This is . . . 
A closet-lock-and-key of villainous secrets ; 
And yet she '11 kneel and pray ; I have seen her do H" 

Here Othello willfully throws aside the evidence of his senses 
which he has to ^Emilia's conscientiousness, and adopts his own 
gratuitous and groundless suspicion of her want of veracity, 
merely because her testimony tends to overthrow an opinion 
firmly lodged in his mind, — - a very common case of self-delu- 
sion and " an idol of the tribe." 

But the doctrine of idols is one subdivision of Bacon's Art of 
Judging, which, he says, " handles the nature of proofs and dem- 
onstrations. In this art the conclusion is made either by induc- 
tion or syllogism. For enthymemes and examples are but abridg- 
ments of these two." 

Bacon divides the Art of Judging by Syllogism into Analytic, 
or the true form of consequence in argument and the doctrine 
concerning the detection of fallacies, that is, of sophistical falla- 
cies, of fallacies of interpretation, and of false appearances or 

idols. 

41 



642 OTHELLO. 

With regard to fallacies of interpretation, he remarks " that 
common and general notions enter necessarily into every discus- 
sion, so that unless great care be taken to distinguish them well 
at the outset, all the light of disputation will be strangely clouded 
by them, and the matter end in disputes about words. For 
equivocations and false acceptations of words are the sophisms of 
sophisms" De Aug. Book V. ch. iv. 

Of fallacies of interpretation, that is, of the errors that arise 
from the false acceptations of words, the play contains numerous 
examples ; as it does also of a certain class of " idols " which 
Bacon considered the most troublesome of all, and with wljich 
the fallacies of interpretation have a close relation. These are 
" the idols " formed by the intercourse and association of men 
with each other, " which," says Bacon, " I call Idols of the Mar- 
ket-Place on account of the commerce and consort of men there. 
For it is by discourse that men associate, and words are imposed 
according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the 
ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the under- 
standing." Nov. Org. Book I. Aph. 43. 

It is very fitting that such errors and fallacies should find a 
place in a play which gives a portrayal of Society in its funda- 
mental features, and therefore there are many examples of mis- 
takes, misunderstandings, false acceptations, and equivocations of 
words in the piece, — of which the scene between Othello, Lu- 
dovico, and Desdemona is an instance. 

" Des. And what 's the news, good cousin Ludovieo ? 
Iago. I am very glad to see you, signor : 
Welcome to Cyprus. 

Lud. I thank you. How does lieutenant Cassio ? 
Iago. Lives, sir. 

Des. Cousin, there 's fallen between him and my lord 
An unkind breach : but you shall make all well. 
Oth. Are you sure of that f 
Des. My lord ? 

Oth. This fail you not to do, as you will. [Reads.~] 
Lud. He did not call ; he 's busy in the paper. 
Is there division 'twixt thy lord and Cassio ? 
Des. A most unhappy one ; I would do much 
To atone them, for the love I bear to Cassio. 
Oth. Fire and brimstone ! 
Des. My lord ? 
Oth. Are you wise f 



OTHELLO. 643 

Des. What, is he angry ? 

Lud. May be the letter mov'd him ; 

For, as I think, they do command him home, 

Deputing Cassio in his government. 

Des. By my troth, / am glad on 9 t. 

Oth. Indeed ? 

Des. My lord ? 

Oth. I am glad to see you mad. 

Des. How, sweet Othello ? 

Oth. Devil ! [Striking her.] 

Of the " ill and unfit choice of words which obstruct the under- 
standing," there is an example in the unfortunate use by Desde- 
mona of the word " committed" " Alas," she says, wondering at 
some obscure though deeply passionate allusions of Othello, which 
seemingly point at misconduct on her part, — 

" Alas ! what ignorant sin have I committed ? " — 

which word " committed " being fcfie one used in the Seventh 
Commandment with reference to the very sin of which Othello 
is then accusing her, arouses all his wrath (for he thinks it 
spoken through sheer impudence), and draws from him a torrent 

of invective. 

" What committed ! 
Committed I O thou public commoner ! 
I should make very forges of my cheeks 
That would to cinders burn up modesty, 
Did I but speak thy deeds. What committed ! 
Heaven stops the nose at it," etc. 

And again Bacon says : " In the whole of the process which 
leads from the sense and objects to axioms and conclusions, the 
demonstrations which we use are deceptive and incompetent. . . . 
In the first place, the impressions of the sense are faulty, for the 
sense both fails us and deceives us. ... In the second place, 
notions are ill-drawn from the impressions of the senses, and are 
indefinite and confused" etc. Nov. Org. Book I. Aph. 69. 

The mistakes which arise from the deceptions of the senses, 
and the misinterpretation of their notices, are exemplified in the 
delusion Othello falls into while watching Cassio in conversation 
with Iago. While Cassio talks and laughs about the over-fond 
Bianca, Othello marks " the fleers, the gibes, and notable seorns 
that dwell in every region of his face," and supposes that these 
refer to Desdemona and himself, or, as I ago says, kk he construes 



/ 






a 

i 



64-4 OTHELLO. 

poor Cassio's smiles, gestures, and light behaviour quite in the 
wrong" It is a conclusion drawn from signs without proper 
examination into facts, vet it suffices to embitter his soul, and 
prompts the deadliest feelings of revenge. Vide Act IV. Sc. 1. 

As for " sophistical fallacies,' ' or ordinary sophisms, they ar< 
exemplified in various forms, particularly by Iago. They pertai 
chiefly to rhetoric, and on that account the piece offers an ad- 
mirable example of the use, or rather the abuse, of rhetoric in 
the affairs of life. This, too, connects itself with the pursuit of 
" the Good,'* for such pursuit involves a consideration both of 
the end arrived at and the means used. But men, as has been 
said, are the chief means used* and men are worked upon by 
suits 2iM<\ persuasions. In moral questions, popular and common 
opinions are valid premises for argument, and the deductive logic 
is admissible to arrive at conclusions, the object being to influ- 
ence opinion and force assent, and not to establish the truth of 
things. The danger of this' method is that it is open to false 
conclusions through sophistry, — a danger made apparent in the 
most startling manner in this tragedy. But the Deductive Method 
is exemplified in The Winter's Tale, which play, however, pre- 
sents it in a different view from Othello, the object of The Win- 
ter's Tale apparently being to illustrate not so much the per- 
nicious use of the deductive method itself as to show that where 
the investigation of truth depends upon it no progress is made 
in discovery except by the agency of Time and Chance : in other 
words, The Winters Tale exemplifies ordinary logic as leading 
to theory, and as being unfit for the investigation of nature. But 
Othello displays the use of deductive logic in Operative Philoso- 
phy, or the production of effects, and is in that play applied to 
the influencing of men to action and the effecting of plans and 
purposes, and illustrates forcibly the danger of being led both to 
a false conclusion and a fatal line of conduct by sophistical argu- 
ments, whether drawn from circumstances, from deceptions of 
the sense, or from false testimony, and it is a warning not to 
trust to conclusions in matters of importance until all points shall 
be duly examined and put to the test. But let us quote what 
Bacon says of this Art of Rhetoric : — 

" Rhetoric is subservient to the imagination as Logic is to the 
understanding ; and the duty and office of Rhetoric, if it be 
deeply looked into, is no other than to apply and recommend the 



OTHELLO. 645 

dictates of reason to the imagination in order to excite the appe- 
tite and will. For we see that the government of reason is 
assailed and disordered in three ways, either by the illaqueation 
of sophistries j which pertains to Logic, or by juggleries of words, 
which pertains to Rhetoric, or by the violence of the passions-* 
which pertains to Ethics. For as in negotiations with others, 
men are usually wrought either by cunning or by importunities or 
by vehemency, so likewise in this negotiation within ourselves we 
are either undermined by fallacies of arguments, or solicited and 
importuned by assiduity of impressions and observations, or agi- 
tated and transported by violence of passions" De Aug. Book 
II. ch. vi. 

Iago excels in all these branches ; he is the most cunning of 
sophists, exhibits the greatest assiduity in stamping impressions 
by constant repetition, and is enabled through his knowledge of 
the human heart to awaken the passions at will. 

He realizes the description of the rhetorician as laid down by 
Aristotle, who speaks of the art as " an off-shoot of logic and of 
that department of moral philosophy which it is fain to call the 
science of life" Bacon further remarks : " The proofs and dem- 
onstrations of logic are the same to all men, but the proofs and 
persuasions of rhetoric ought to differ according to the audi- 
tors ; like a musician accommodating his skill to different ears, a 
man should be 

" Orpheus in silvis, inter delphinas Arion ; 

which application and variety of speech, in perfection of idea 
ought to extend so far that if a man should speak of the same 
thing to several persons, he should nevertheless use different 
words to each of them. . . . And therefore it will not be amiss 
to recommend this of which I now speak to fresh inquiry, and 
calling it by the name of The Wisdom of Private Discourse to 
set it down among the deficients, being a thing which the more it 
is considered the more it will be valued." De Aug. Book VI. 
ch. ii. 

Although Bacon places this Wisdom of Private Discourse 
among the deficients, yet it is an art in which [ago is an adept ; 
and had the philosopher wished to present a practical model of 
his doctrine in "perfection of idea" he would have found in 
Othello's Ancient one to his mind, — for Iago, besides possessing 



646 OTHELLO. 

a perfect command of sophistry, and of the most persuasive and 
suggestive phrases and words, is able to vary his style with the 
different persons he addresses, hitting the capacity and tone of 
each in turn. With Eoderigo he is copious, pleonastic, full of 
repetition, and bears down all opposition by a flood of words ; with 
Othello he is grave, sententious, moral, and argumentative ; with 
Cassio he adopts a friendly, confidential, and advisory manner ; 
with Desdemona he is sympathetic and suggestive of causes for 
Othello's unkindness. In his soliloquies he drops all his rhetorical 
artifices, and becomes remarkably terse, pointed, and incisive, — 
displaying all his malignity of mind in its naked hideousness, 
and stating, like a brief chorus, what agencies he will use and 
what misery he will produce. 

His discourses with Eoderigo, persuading him to this or that 
course, are specimens of the deliberative style, having expediency 
for its end, and particularly is this the case in the speech in which 
he persuades him to follow the wars in the hope of gaining the 
love of Desdemona. His argument has all the main points of a 
piece of deliberative oratory, delivered in a colloquial manner. 
Iago avows himself a friend of the hearer (" knit to his deserving 
with cables of perdurable toughness,'' of which the hyperbole sym- 
bolizes the insincerity of the speaker) : his ability to serve him : 
the strong ground of hope and even the certainty of favorable 
results from the nature of the circumstances (he all the while 
touching Boderigo's pride of purse by allusions to the power of 
money) ; the inexpediency of drowning himself (which Eoderigo 
had threatened) : and, in conclusion, clinches all by a show of 
joint interest (" let us be conjunctive in our revenge "), which 
is a voucher for his sincerity. In its copious diction, its repe- 
tition of phrases, and its expansion of a thought, it follows strictly 
the rules laid down by rhetoricians as means of persuasion. 

Iago's " praise of women" in answer to the request of Desde- 
mona may be ranked as a demonstrative of which the office is to 
praise or dispraise, and his accusation of Desdemona and proof 
of her guilt belongs clearly to the judicial. The popular opinion 
is that rhetoric can only be exhibited in harangues to public as- 
semblies, but it is, as Bacon has shown us, equally if not more 
useful in private discourse; and although Iago puts his brief 
praise of women in verse, and addresses it to Desdemona alone, 
it is none the less a specimen of demonstrative rhetoric. 



OTHELLO. 647 

Bacon divides Philosophy into Speculative and Operative, or 
the Inquisition of Causes and the Production of Effects. The 
tragedy of Lear furnishes an example of Speculative Philosophy 
or the Inquiry of Causes, such causes being, when human conduct 
is the subject of inquiry, the end or intention (final causes) 
which men entertain ; so in Othello we have an example of Oper- 
ative Philosophy, or production of effects by the knowledge of 
causes, Iago working most marvelous changes in the Moor's 
nature by his knowledge of the springs of action and his power 
over words. The aim of true philosophy is beneficial ; it seeks 
to benefit and improve man's estate ; but Iago perverts his power 
and uses his knowledge of causes for the degradation and ruin 
of the noble and good. And in this way the abuse of rhetoric, 
with its juggleries of words and the danger lurking in the deduc- 
tive method of discovering truth, are made glaringly manifest. 

At the close of the play, Ludovico, pointing to the dead bodies 
of Othello, Desdemona, and ^Emilia, says to Iago : — 

" Look upon the tragic loading of this bed : 
This is your work. The object poisons sight," — . 

that is, this horrible sight is the work of Iago, the rhetorician, 
the master of speech and sophistry, who can make mere words 
stand for facts and reasons. 

It is significant that, after his calumnies are exposed, Iago 
refuses, as if now his occupation were gone, to reply to questions, 
or to use speech in any manner. 

" Demand me nothing : what you know, you know. 
From this time forth, I never will speak word." 

From all which it seems that it may be justly conjectured that 
this play taken as a whole and in all its parts — whatever may 
have been the intent of the writer — is " a natural story which 
draws down to the sense," and exhibits in mimic life and action 
and with full and copious illustrations Bacon's doctrine of the 
" Exemplar of Good," together with the grave errors of judgment 
into which the mind falls through the influence of sophistical 
fallacies, the mistakes of the sense, the fallacies of interpretation 
of words, as well as those inherent imperfections which Baoon 
terms " false appearances or idols." 

A few words may be added with regard to the composition of 
the piece. 



648 OTHELLO. 

A novel — and Othello is a drama, with the characteristics of a 
novel — i s a fictitious history of a life : and the play takes for its 
constructive principles the idea that underlies that class of liter- 
ary works. A History of a Life is described by Bacon as a work 
"propounding to itself a single person as a subject, in which 
actions both trifling and important, great and small, public and 
private, must needs be united and mingled." In like manner, 
a novel concentrates the interest on a main personage, who is 
technically called " the hero," to whom all the other characters 
are secondary, however important they may be in and of them- 
selves. The story is a narrative of the circumstances attending 
the hero's pursuit of success, — most often in matters of love and 
marriage. These circumstances are necessarily successive, but 
such succession is not a mere detail of incidents in the order of 
time, but is a connected succession, one event growing out of 
another, and developing a character through some passion or some 
purpose in its different stages from its first incipiency to its full 
completion. In the play Othello in his address to the Senate gives 
a history of his life from his " boyish days " down to the period of 
his marriage, and from that point the play puts before us the 
rise, growth, and culmination of his jealousy ; as it does also the 
gradual execution of Iago's plans from their first conception to 
their final accomplishment. The chief interest of a novel, there- 
fore, is derived from its delineation of a character under the 
pressure of circumstances. "In all men," says Bacon, "nature is 
wrought upon by fortune and fortune by nature ; " and novels 
paint in the minutest manner this reciprocal influence of character 
and circumstance, or to state it more broadly, of the soul and the 
world of sense. Novels, moreover, draw their plots from domestic 
and social life, and are pictures of the manners and sentiments of 
the different classes of society ; but a play that aims at being a 
development of the idea of a novel as a work of art, must, in 
order to be typical, depict Society in its primary and fundamental 
principles. It must present those features that are permanent 
and universal. In the case of Othello, therefore, we find the 
representation laid upon a background of a Christian State and 
civilization, or a background of law and religion, these being the 
ultimate standards of opinion and conduct, to which each indi- 
vidual member of society is responsible. Consequently goodness 
and fidelity to duty are the prime requisites of high character, 



OTHELLO. 649 

exalting and giving its possessor proportionate standing and emi- 
nence, and thus creating gradation and classes. Out of these 
last, in turn, grow envy and jealousy, which ever pursue excel- 
lence with detraction. Good and evil therefore, that is, goodness, 
which is love in action, and envy, which is hate in action, are 
the two original forces of Society, and in this play are made the 
basis of the characterization. 

In estimating character the true standard is the Exemplar of 
Good — or what morally is the same thing — the Christian ideal, 
which combines both goodness and wisdom ; but more often is the 
standard drawn from usage and public opinion, which frequently 
uphold and even enjoin a course as manly and honorable which 
both law and religion condemn. In this respect are essentially 
differenced the characters of Othello and Desdemona ; the latter 
following her sense of right and braving public opinion, while the 
former is led by his worship of that same opinion to murder his 
wife in defiance of every injunction human and divine against it. 

In the estimates of character, however, goodness is taken in its 
broadest sense, and includes excellence of any kind ; it may be 
moral, as it appears in Desdemona, who unites nevertheless, with 
the greatest zeal in doing good no mean ability in her modes of 
so doing ; to which she alludes in her assurance to Cassio, — 

" Be thou assured, good Cassio, I will do 
All my abilities in thy behalf " — 

or it may be intellectual, in which case it is equivalent to skill, 
ability, sufficiency for the discharge of some office or vocation, as 
is seen in Othello and Cassio, both of whom, moreover, share 
largely in moral goodness, with admixture of some defects. It is 
hardly necessary to say that envy has its perfect example in Iago. 
The plot and business of the play is carried forward by the 
pursuit of " the good," or of that in the possession of which men 
judge their happiness to consist. This motive or impulse is inhe- 
rent in the human heart, and on it rests the very foundations of 
Society ; for one of its most conspicuous results is love and mar- 
riage. This is strongly typified in Othello and Desdemona, who, 
seeking their happiness in mutual love, override the obstacles that 
social pride or usage might interpose and thereby violate the true 
"good." For Othello, notwithstanding his high honor, abuses the 
trust and hospitality of Brabantio by clandestinely abduoting his 



650 OTHELLO. 

daughter, and Desdernona. although the pattern of goodness, is 
guilty of gross deception and most unfilial conduct towards her 
father. These circumstances, attending this union, which other- 
wise was so profoundly a matter of the soul and so assured of hap- 
piness, are in the end a source of misery and ruin. 

But the pursuit of " the good " comprises all the ends of human 
life and every object of human desire : for everything that man 
strives for is necessarily a M good." real or apparent. Even wick- 
edness is a seeming " good " to the wicked who reap pleasure or 
profit from it. as we see in Iago. who takes as much pleasure in 
inflicting misery as the benevolent do in conferring happiness. 

The pursuit of "the good" also gives rise to suits, solicitations, 
intrigues, and the use of influence, all which are obvious features 
of the play : and besides the more prominent instances, which in 
fact constitute much of the business of the piece, there are inter- 
spersed many solicitations, wishes, requests, and the like, which 
are suits of a minor kind. 

The goodness of Desdernona, moreover, cooperates unwittingly 
with the cunning of Iago to produce the catastrophe : but this is 
done through the agency of speech, the instrument of Society, 
through which circumstances in themselves innocent are made ter- 
ribly potent to test and reveal character : and indeed, with refer- 
ence to the soul, speech may itself be regarded as circumstance. 
It is only by external signs that soul can communicate with soul, 
and. of all circumstances in the outward world, those that most 
affect and work upon the character are words : but as these are 
often full of deceit, they enhance vastly the evils that spring from 
the duplicity of circumstance. 

It is clear that the idea of a novel is the formative principle of 
this drama, which portrays Society in its germs and causes ; such 
idea shapes character, incidents, and business of the plot : and it 
is equally potent over the dialogue and diction even in the smallest 
particulars. 

It has been pointed out how Christianity colors the sentiments 
and opinions of the personages of the piece, and how speech is 
illustrated as the utterance of the soul, and also as the organ with 
which calumny gilds error and glosses circumstance. It is itself 
exemplified as circumstance : for instance, from it can be inferred 
the physical condition of the speaker, as when Desdernona says to 
Othello,— 






OTHELLO. 651 

" Your speech is faint ; are you not well ? " 
It is also looked upon as an accomplishment, as follows : — 



' Des. This Ludovico is a proper man. 
JEm. A very handsome man. 
Des, He speaks well" 



Speech, too, indicates the state of mind without reference to the 
words, as in this : — 

" I do understand a fury in your words, 
But not the words." 

^ Speech expressive of a presentiment regarded as empty words : 

" Des, Good Father ! how foolish are our minds ! 
If I do die before thee, pr'ythee, shroud me 
In one of those same sheets. 
JSm. Come, come, you talk. 9 ' 

In keeping with this representation of the various uses of speech 
is the frequent introduction of street cries, alarms, shouts for aid, 
clamor of midnight brawl ; also signal guns, shots of courtesy, 
alarm-bells, trumpets announcing some person or event, etc. 

Metaphors and figures taken from speech will, of course, be nu- 
merous, of which one may be quoted, — 

" O you mortal engines, whose rude throats 
Th' immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit " etc., — 

which gives us the same notion of " imitable thunder " which Ba- 
con speaks of when, contrasting the ancients with the moderns, 
he awards superiority of knowledge to the latter on the ground, 
among other reasons, that their "imitable thunder" was in prece- 
dence of the ancient " in — imitable thunder : " " Demens ! qui 
nimbo et non imitabile fulmen," etc. De Aug. Book II. ch. x. 

Of the conceptions embraced in the idea of the piece, and 
which are, as it were, topics under which the vocabulary can be 
distributed, there are only two that will be touched upon here, 
viz., goodness and circumstance. 

Two opposite classes of words, affined respectively with good 
and evil, perfect and imperfect, will be found in the play ; as with 
perfect, may be placed full, complete, entire, solid, all, all-i/i-a/l, 
one, and the like; and with imperfect, there will go monstrous, 
disproportionate, empty, maimed, cracked, and many others : so 
with goodness will be classed, besides terms indicative of virtue 



■ 

/ 



652 OTHELLO. 

and excellence, such words as ability, sufficiency, skill, and so forth : 
and with evil will be taken the vices and all words expressing de- 
ficiency and infirmity in any respect. With the good, moreover, 
will be placed the objects of pursuit, as happiness, joy, content, 
comfort, satisfaction, pleasure, sport, advantage, fruit, jjrofit, 
and the like, to which there will be an offset of the opposite class 
affined with evil ; both of which classes are numerous. 

The notion of circumstance is that which perhaps gives the 
most distinctive feature to the style. It is thus defined by Rich- 
ardson : "It is applied, individually, to anything surrounding or 
in any manner attending, accompanying, or connected with the 
main fact ; collectively, in the plural, to the whole state, situation, 
or condition of affairs, as formed, constituted, or composed by va- 
rious separate particulars : the particulars" 

The latter half of this definition is the only part which will here 
be exampled. 

Circumstances being equivalent to particulars, there are many 
passages which give enumeration of details or are marked by par- 
ticularity of statement ; as these : — 

" Do but encave yourself, 
And mark the fleers, the gibes, and notable scorns 
That dwell in every region of his face • 
For I will make him tell the tale anew 
Where, how, how oft, how long ago and when 
He hath and is again to meet your wife." 

Othello's "farewell" is a beautiful instance of this particular- 
ity of statement, as is also his description of the circumstances 
attending the making of the handkerchief. 

Great emphasis as well as pathos is attained in the following 
passage by the particularity of Desdemona's protestations : — 

" Here I kneel : 
If e'er my will did trespass 'gainst his love, 
Either in discourse or thought or actual deed ; 
Or that mine eyes, mine ears or any sense 
Delighted them in any other form ; 
Or that I do not yet and ever did 
And ever will — though he do shake me off 
To beggarly divorcement — love him dearly, 
Comfort forswear me ! " 

The foregoing extracts are sufficient to indicate the impress 
that circumstance gives to the style of the play. With respect to 



OTHELLO. 653 

what has been called in these pages, not very accurately, perhaps, 
the rhetoric of the pieces, suffice it to say that in Othello there is 
found the same curious verbal cabinet work, so to speak, as is 
lavished on all the great plays. These particularities in the com- 
position of the pieces have been somewhat the more dwelt upon 
for the reason that they are strong proofs of the accuracy with 
which the idea of a play is assigned, inasmuch as they are the 
final outgrowth and flowering of such idea. Such details, how- 
ever, are of but little general interest, and therefore but one more 
quotation will be made, and that because it furnishes a good ex- 
ample of the poet's power of condensing his matter as well as of 
his art in form. It is the closing speech of Othello. 

When he is assured that he has " fallen in the practice of a 
cursed slave " and that he stands before the world as a malefactor, 
Othello's justice as well as his great remorse at once dictates his 
course ; he must die. That opinion, a blind worship of which led 
him into his disgrace, is still the idol of his soul ; and the sense 
of his past merits seems to him as perhaps having some influence 
to shield his name from too great obloquy. In his last request, 
he begs that he may be spoken of exactly as he is, that no gloss 
may be put upon the circumstances of the case, no bias given to 
the reports respecting him. 

" Oth. Soft you : a word or two before you go. 
I have done the State some service and they know it. 
No more of that. 1 pray you, in your letters, 
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate 
Speak of me as I am ; nothing extenuate 
Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak 
Of one, that lov'd not wisely, but too well ; 
Of one, not easily jealous, but, being wrought, 
Perplex'd in the extreme ; of one, whose hand 
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away 
Richer than all his tribe ; of one, whose subdu'd eyes 
Albeit unused to the melting mood 
Drop tears as fast as Arabian trees 
Their med'cinable gum. Set you down this, 
And say besides, that in Aleppo onoe 
Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk 
Beat a Venetian and tnnhird the State, 
I took by the throat the oircumoised dog 
And smote him — thus. [Stabs himself. 
Lud. ' O bloody period." 



654 OTHELLO. 

Nowhere, probably, but in the Shakespearian drama, can there 
be discovered the same number of beauties compressed in so 
small a number of lines as are found in this remarkable pas- 
sage. Othello, the man of honor, whose words always truly ex- 
press his thoughts and feelings, gives utterance in this his dying 
speech to all the emotions of his soul. His words reflect his 
inmost man and are an epitome of his character. They reveal 
his pride, his candor, his love, his jealousy, his barbaric ignorance, 
his guilt, his misery, his remorse, his despair : and in the last 
incident mentioned, they disclose his life of adventure, his creed. 
and his loyalty to the State. Add thereto their characteristic 
metaphors and allusions, their poetry, their pathos, and the sol- 
emn cadence of the verse. And all this is brought about with 
consummate ease and skill, and kept in unison with the funda- 
mental conception of the play by being thrown into the form of a 
request — most natural under the circumstances — that all reports 
should correspond precisely with the facts, such correspondency 
being of the essence of truth imperverted by malice : whilst in 
the allusion to the occurrence at Aleppo they remind us. in the 
malignity of the Turk who traduced the State, of that malevo- 
lence acting through calumny that forms the * subject-matter of 
the play. It may be a divine madness that can inspire such 
poetry and philosophy, but there is a wondrous method in it. 



THE TEMPEST. 

This comedy, which is a dramatic narrative of the events that 
befell a ship's company wrecked upon a desert island, can never- 
theless be construed as an allegory which shadows forth the fun- 
damental principles of Government, together with the highest 
results of the Baconian philosophy. Viewed simply as a play, 
it is the perfection of Shakespearian art, the hidden roots and 
sources of its vitality being revealed only in the symmetry and 
beauty of its outgrowth. The plot and characterization are simple 
and composed of the fewest possible elements ; the style is marked 
by sobriety of thought and brevity of expression, and the whole 
play, like its own magic, which works its wondrous effects by the 
most diminutive agencies, exercises its power over the imagination 
with the greatest economy of means. 

The following are its main incidents : Prospero, the duke of 
Milan, whose state " through all the signiories was for the liberal 
arts without a parallel," being transported and rapt in secret 
studies, casts the government of his dukedom upon his brother, 
Antonio, who, seizing the opportunity afforded by Prospero's re- 
tirement, confederates with Alonzo, king of Naples, to usurp the 
sovereignty and depose the lawful duke. The plot is successful: 
" one midnight fated to the purpose," Prospero and his infant 
daughter are hurried away from Milan and exposed upon the 
open sea in a " rotten carcass of a boat," to take their chances 
of the winds and waves. For twelve years afterward the Nea- 
politan King and the usurping duke enjoy the fruits of their 
guilt ; Prospero and his claims are forgotten, and no sting of con- 
science ever reminds his enemies of the violence and fraud they 
have practiced upon him. But Prospero is providentially drifted 
to the shore of a " most desolate isle " where, cut off from all 
human intercourse and sustained only by strength of character 
and affection for his daughter, he devotes himself to studies that 
will enable him to reestablish his fortunes by imparting to him 
qualities that command success. Though he has lost his coronet, 



THE TEMPEST. 

ver ipline and culture exalt hiin to a supremacy of wis- 

dom and virtue far higher than any that political station can con- 
So deep is his lore, so pure his motives, that he acquires 
ments a magical control, and is able to subject to his 
:he ministering spirits that attend upon the working of 
the : NafciiJ : himself and over the 

physical world jualifies him to be the ruler of men. All that 
needs t sxcreise of his powers is Opportunity, and 

±ers. Alonz«: and Antonio, with their kinsmen and 
srs, are embarked on a voyage from Tunis, where they had 
1 the marriage ibel, the king's daughter, and are 

-n so near to Prosperous island as to come within reach of his 
it. His fortunes now depend upon his ability to profit 
by the occasion. The conditions under which he must act are 
thus ; :~ him to his daughter Miranda : — 

•• By accident m si strange, bountiful Fortune 
B :>w my dear lady ) hath mine enemies 
Brought : :iiis shore ; and by my prescience 
I find my zenith doth depend upon 
A most auspicious star, whose influence 
If now I court not but omit, my fortunes 
WiE ever after droop." 

Then or never must the blow be struck : by promptitude and 

skill must he show that he is master of the occasion. By his 

:— tempest that wrecks the king's ship, but with 

"such provision in his art " that the king's company are brought 

ly to shore at different points and dispersed in troops 
the island. Prospero has in view twe -/ ling :': J -r::s. both how- 
ever pointing to his restoration to power: on-, so tc subdue and 
reform the minds of his enemies that they shall yield him his 
tits through "heart's sorrow" and fears of conscience, the 
othr b the king's son and hi- ; _ r^r Miranda with 

a mutual affection, by their happiness will be secured and 

his regal dignity. Both his character and his 

power seem to no room to d his success, yet he 

know that his pro' nnot be accomplished with 

~ toil. It is nring the passage of his "auspicious 

d :: : his purposes. Every minute must have 
\ task . -.-: y moment its allotted duty. He thus addresses 
his attendant spirit, Ariel : — 



THE TEMPEST. 657 

" Prospero. What 's the time d > iti day ? 
Ariel. Past the mid season. 

Pros. At least two glasses. The time 'twixt six and now 
Must by us both be spent most preciously." 

He leaves nothing to chance, but exercises the utmost vigilance 
over his " industrious servant, Ariel," whom by promises of free- 
dom he prompts to the greatest zeal in the exact performance of 
every command; and his own time, when not otherwise employed 
in directing the movements of his plot, he spends in study with 

regard to it. He says : — 

" / '11 to my book, 
For yet, ere supper time, must I perform 
Much business appertaining." 

Nor does his solicitude diminish until he is assured that ample 
success is about to crown all his efforts. 

" Now does my project gather to a head, 
My charms crack not, my spirits obey,- and Time 
Goes upright with his carriage."- 

By these means he regains his dukedom, humiliates and reforms 
his enemies, affiances his daughter to the crown prince of Naples, 
in every way shows himself entitled to command, while his mod- 
eration and clemency in the hour of triumph are a conclusive 
proof that self-command is the basis of his power. 

From the foregoing outline of Prospero's purposes and his 
mode of effecting them can be gathered the special significance 
of this allegorical comedy. Prospero's end was the recovery of 
his dukedom, for which he desired power as the means of accom- 
plishing this result. In his situation such power could only be 
found in knowledge, and this was to be obtained by Work and 
Travail. 

And, therefore, u the form" adopted as an artistic idea for this 
comedy is that of a " History of Travail " or " Voyage of Dis- 
covery," which, in the Elizabethan era, was au account of toils 
and sufferings undergone for the sake of discoveries of new lands 
that should augment man's knowledge and dominion over nature ; 
and the "form" or essential idea of such a story is Work or 
Travail done for the increase of knowledge and power. 

In correspondence with this the play portrays a philosopher or 
magician, who by toil and travail has made discoveries that carry 
the ordinary knowledge of causes or of means for the supply 
42 






/ 



658 THE TEMPEST. 

of man's wants up to that higher science of " forms," or formal 
causes, which gives man a mastery of nature's laws. 

This, too, is in direct accordance with the usual method of the 
poet, who always illustrates the Science that grows out of the use 
of the means for the attainment of the special end depicted in 
the play : in this instance, that end is power or the knowledge of 
causes as means of operating any desired effect, and this is pro- 
cured by work or travail. The original wants of man were sup- 
plied by a knowledge of means which constituted a rudimentary 
art, sufficient for a primitive mode of life, but as wants multiply 
there is need of increased knowledge, until by toil and study 
man shall arrive at that science of "forms" or formal causes, 
which, according to Bacon, is the summit of philosophy and gives 
man absolute sway over the world around him. This he terms 
" Magic," and it is represented in the play by the magical control 
that Prospero holds, by means of " forms," over the king and his 
companions. 

But in order to relieve the sobriety of his theme, the play- 
writer, who always gives full measure and keeps an eye withal to 
popular feelings and opinions, makes his piece a " Traveller's 
Story " by distilling into it the spirit of the accounts given by 
the adventurers of his time of the marvels and prodigies met 
with by them in the new-found lands beyond the sea, many of 
which were reputed to be the abodes of devils, fairies, and other 
supernatural beings. In this way he renders his comedy a dra- 
matic ideal of a " History of Travailes, or Voyage of Discoverie," 
in which are related troubles encountered, wonders seen, and re- 
gions discovered. The value of such a woi^k lies in the minute- 
ness of its particulars and the novelty of the wonders it narrates. 
The analogy between the " Travail " of the Voyager and that of 
the philosopher is palpable. ■ They both toil for the gratification 
of curiosity, the increase of knowledge, and the enlargement of 
man's dominion by discovery. It is owing to this idea that allu- 
sions to plantation, colonization, and traveler's tales are intro- 
duced into the piece. There may even be found in it hits at the 
mismanagement of the affairs of " The Virginia Company." 

The allegorical import of the play, however, becomes more 
manifest by comparing its incidents and general tenor with cer- 
tain doctrines of Bacon on the subject of man's restoration to 
power over creation. It was a fundamental tenet with Bacon that 



THE TEMPEST. 659 

man should by labor recover that control of nature which he had 
lost through the fall. By work, every moment should be improved 
for Profit and Advancement, and the wisest possible use be made 
of Time. 

The momentous nature of this use becomes more apparent 
when we reflect upon the conditions under which man holds his 
existence in this world of want and pain, — conditions so hard 
that their alleviation Bacon over and over again declares to be 
the true end of human knowledge. In one of his earliest works 
entitled " Of the Interpretation of Nature," speaking of the uses 
of knowledge, he has these words : " Yet evermore it must be 
remembered that the least part of knowledge passed to man must 
be subject to that use for which God hath granted it ; which is 
the benefit and relief of the state and society of man. . . . And 
therefore it is not the pleasure of curiosity, nor the quiet of reso- 
lution, nor the raising of the spirit, nor victory of wit, nor faculty 
of speech, nor lucre of profession, nor ambition of honor or fame, 
nor inablement for business that are the true ends of knowledge, 
but it is a restitution and reinvesting (in great part) of man to 
the sovereignty and power which he had in his^rs^ state of crea- 
tion: 7 Vol. VI. p. 34. 

And in the Novum Organum, which is also entitled " Aphor- 
isms concerning The Kingdom of Man" he speaks (Book I. 
Aph. 129) of new discoveries as new creations and imitations of 
God's works, as well sang the poet : — 

"To man's frail race great Athens long ago 
First gave the seed whence waving harvests grow, 
And re-created all our life below." 

And in Aph. 52, Book II. he says : " For man by the fall fell at 
the same time from his state of innocency and from his dominion 
over creation. Both of these losses however can even in this life 
be in some part repaired : the former by religion and faith; the 
latter by arts and sciences. For creation was not by the curse 
made altogether and forever a rebel, but in virtue of that charter 
'In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread* it is now by va- 
rious labours at length and in some measure suodued to the sup* 
plying of man with bread ; that is, to the uses of hit man life" 

The foregoing doctrines are incorporated into this play and fur- 
nish its dominant conceptions. Prospero's method of regaining 



660 THE TEMPEST. 

his lost dukedom by a knowledge that reaches a magical com- 
mand over the powers of Nature is obviously analogous with the 
restitution of man to his sovereignty over creation by science, the 
highest practical form of which is in Bacon's system denominated 
"Magic." But this great achievement of restoring "The King- 
dom of Man " depends upon labor, — " labour as well in inventing 
as in executing; yet nevertheless chiefly that labour and travel," 
says Bacon, " which is described by the sweat of the brows more 
than of the body ; that is such travel as is joined with the 
working and discursion of the spirits in the brain " (Vol. VI. p. 
35) ; or, in other words, labor intellectual and scientific involving 
the due employment of time. For man is a creature of time ; 
his life being literally but a moment, inasmuch as he lives only in 
the present, which is an ever-advancing point between the reced- 
ing past and the approaching future, and Time, like the thread of 
the hour-glass, though continuous to the sense, is a series of mi- 
nute and individual particles. But this series has no existence 
nor reality save as the ground of order and priority in nature, 
nor could we have either perception or measure of duration but 
for the regular and periodical recurrence of certain phenomena in 
the external world. In the economy of nature everything is " per- 
formed to point." Sun, moon, tides, night, day, the seasons are 
punctual to their appointed hours. There should be the same 
exactitude in the moral world. To the wise man every moment 
is Opportunity, and to do and say the right thing at the right 
time — the exact punctum temporis — is the maximum of wis- 
dom. To effect this requires a perfect prescience, the attribute 
of Divine Providence alone, in whose government of the world 
every particular is prearranged and every event falls out pre- 
cisely at the appointed time. Yet this prescience or prudence 
is shared by man in proportion to his knowledge of the order of 
nature, and such knowledge is the fruit of labor. By toil and 
travail alone can he discover those principles which govern the 
succession of events in the material and moral worlds, and the 
knowledge of which confers foresight, prophecy, and power. 

This scheme, thus generally stated, is apparently the basis of 
the play, but in order that it may be more clearly traced in the 
structure of the piece, it may be touched upon in some of its par- 
ticulars. 

The objects of Labor are material prosperity and the acquisi- 



THE TEMPEST. 661 

tion of knowledge, and the use of Time is but a phrase signifying 
the use which Man makes of the world without and within him. 
Through his physical conditions man stands in as close proximity 
to nature as the tree that is rooted to the earth. He can . neither 
see nor hear nor speak nor exist without the use of the elements. 
The first and indispensable knowledge he must acquire concerns 
his bodily life, his food, raiment, shelter, and all that conduces to 
his physical comfort and safety. From his birth he is employed 
in gaining an acquaintance with the world that is to be his home, 
and long before the period of conscious reflection arrives, he has 
stored his mind with a great and varied knowledge of the uses 
and qualities of things, of times, and seasons, and of the action 
and influence of the elements. These primary and common acqui- 
sitions, without which life would not be worth a moment's pur- 
chase, might perhaps suffice for the supply of his necessities, were 
he a mere eating, drinking, and sleeping animal (and the king 
and his company, particularly the Stephano group, are but little 
more), but being endowed with reason and a desire for progress, 
he carries within him the seeds of societies, laws, and civilization, 
as represented by Prospero and his intellectual sovereignty over 
nature. Not content with crude observation or casual experience, 
he subjects all things to his analysis, resolves them into their first 
principles, learns their properties, and by the study of dispersed 
and isolated phenomena, discovers the general laws which control 
the order and procession of nature. By these means he builds 
up the Arts and Sciences, in one word, Philosophy, by which he 
incalculably enlarges his knowledge of the uses of things, regains 
his dominion over nature to an astonishing degree, and compels 
the elemental forces which would prove his swift destruction were 
he unacquainted with their modes of action, to become the prompt 
and untiring slaves of his will. Thus philosophy, which explores 
the economy of the world and seeks by analysis of bodies into 
their elementary natures to learn their uses and qualities, is but 
a higher kind of experience, which has its germ in the familiar 
knowledge of those common things that supply man's physical 
wants and necessities; and in its application to human affairs, its 
obvious advantage lies in multiplying man's aids and comforts. 
and in furnishing precepts for all the emergencies and occasions 
of life. 

But it is not merely by the subjection of the forces of nature to 



662 THE TEMPEST. 

economic uses that Philosophy is serviceable to man : it has a 
higher and nobler use in the exaltation and refinement of his 
Humanity ; for Culture liberalizes the mind, softens the manners, 
refines the feelings, inspires courage and patience under adverse 
fortune, and converts barbarism to civilization. Culture, there- 
fore, is productive of charity and mutual assistance, and teaches 
that the knowledge which confers power is worse than useless 
unless applied to the aid and service of man. All true power is 
beneficent in its action, and is exercised in creation and reforma- 
tion, not in destruction. It is ever ready to pardon penitent guilt. 
The Mightiest Power is the Author of all things, and his tender 
mercies are over all his works ; and the power of the philoso- 
pher then shows likest God's when it is exercised in alleviating 
the miseries and promoting the welfare of mankind. Obviously 
the relation that Man holds to a period or point of Time, regarded 
as Opportunity, is equivalent to that which he bears to the order 
of nature and of the world without him, to which he must con- 
form his conduct to ensure his well-being. 

The knowledge which enables him to do this goes by the 
homely name of Prudence, which is the practical application of the 
lessons of experience to human affairs and the prime virtue in a 
world of utility. Prudence enjoins not only the use, but the fit 
use of Time. It is that ivra&a or modestia of the Stoics which is 
defined as " the science of the fitness of time for acting and speak- 
ing." "Eadem est prudentice definition says Cicero. It is the 
science of details and particulars ; it looks at every plan in all its 
parts, and points out that the minutest part, whether in matters of 
the household or of the State, is precious as necessary to the good 
order and harmony of the whole. It is the soul of economy and 
husbandry ; it distributes affairs and times and prescribes method 
and progress according to principle, and is therefore the virtue of 
the business man ; and in its higher manifestations, it rises into 
that Wisdom which, according to Bacon's maxim, is Power and 
the true title to sovereignty. But this practical virtue is bounded 
by the limitations of man's knowledge. Were the laws which 
regulate the winds and waves as well understood as are those 
which govern the courses of the stars, the prudent mariner might 
embark with as little risk of wreck as he now incurs of missing 
his destined port. But beyond the scope of Man's imperfect 
vision, there lies a vast realm of Chance or Contingency, pre- 



THE TEMPEST. 663 

sided over by that Power, whether called Destiny or Fate or 
Providence, — 

" That hath to instrument this lower world 
And what is in it," — 

and is ruler of the chances of the hour. To this Power — and in 
this dramatic allegory, some of the most familiar tenets of modern 
theology are invested with a classic costume — are owing those 
seemingly fortuitous concurrences, which afford occasions for 
securing some advantage and give to the passing moments their 
special value. If such moments are used with a wise foresight of 
their whole drift and bearing, the might of nature cooperates with 
the endeavors of man and the event is prosperous ; if neglected 
through improvidence or perverted to unjust ends, they lead to 
loss and misery. This Power, therefore, which sows the seeds of 
retributive justice, of rewards and punishments, advantage and 
loss, in the use and misuse of every moment, forms the moral 
background of the play. 

So far then as man's knowledge extends is he mercifully 
allowed to share in the power with which the world is ruled, and 
this faculty finds its legitimate exercise in relieving the wants 
and miseries of men. This it does by teaching useful arts and 
wise rules of life, and above all, by instituting good government, 
which rewards industry, punishes guilt, reforms the penitent, and 
maintains order and security by repressing and chastising the 
criminal and vicious ; more particularly when these attempt to 
usurp authority for the indulgence of bad passions or the gratifi- 
cation of sensual appetite. The possession of such power and its 
uses are instanced in Prospero. 

To exemplify the foregoing tenets, this comedy places man in 
as direct juxtaposition to the elements of earth, air, fire, and 
water as is possible in dramatic representation. The company 
stranded on the desolate isle have no artificial barriers between 
them and those forces of nature, which are such excellent servants 
but such tyrannical masters. 

All the elements are indispensable to man's existence, but the 
air, without which his bodily lite could be sustained but a few 
moments, is preeminently so, it being the great agent of his prog- 
ress and knowledge, for the air is the vehicle of sound, and all 
the sounds of nature from the chirp of the insect to the rever- 
berations of the thunder, have significance (or the ear of man: 






664 THE TEMPEST. 

but those which are the most potent over his mind and feelings 
are the minute articulate ones, which constitute the elements of 
speech, whereby knowledge is communicated, humanity advanced, 
and civilization made possible. These are the spells that are 
truly magical and prove the potency of little things to work mar- 
velous effects. 

The primary step in culture is language, and this, in turn, is 
the means of instruction. Neither thought nor purpose can be 
made known except by taking form in words ; as is emphasized in 
the teachings Prospero gives Caliban. 

" I pitied thee, 
Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour 
One thing or other : when thou didst not, savage, 
Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble, like 
A thing most brutish, I endowed thy purposes 
With words that made them known" 

Act I. Sc. 2. 

The central figure of the piece is Prospero. Under the guise 
of a wise and benevolent magician, he is a type of the highest 
culture. His knowledge of nature extends to a control of the 
elements, and his enlarged humanity embraces in its benevolence 
even his worst enemies. He is a magnificent ideal of the phi- 
losopher, who wields the powers of the highest . science for the 
benefit of mankind. His magic is a poetic realization of that 
power sought by Bacon in the study of "forms" or primary laws 
of nature, and to which that great philosopher gave the name of 
"magic, or natural prudence" 1 Commanding by his art the 
invisible agents that preside over the qualities and properties of 
things, Prospero has full control over the physical conditions of 
those around him, paralyzing their powers of action with a wave 
of his wand, or causing them to sleep or wake at his pleasure. 
He acts the part of a subordinate Providence in whose hands the 
forces of nature are instruments for the punishment of guilt. 
His enemies, who had exposed him and his child to destruction by 
the elements, he dismays with shapes and sounds so terrifying to 

1 There be two parts of Natural Philosophy — the inquisition of causes and the 
production of effects, speculative and operative, natural science and natural prudence. 
And here I will make a request that, for the latter, I may revive and redintegrate 
the misapplied and abused name of natural magic, which in its true sense is but natu- 
ral wisdom or natural prudence, taken according to the ancient acceptation, purged 
from vanity and superstition. " Advancement of Learning, p. 214. 



THE TEMPEST. 665 

their consciences and so contrary to the order of nature that they 
are driven mad with amazement and fear. 

Prospero has no vindictive aims ; humane as mighty he chastises 
his enemies only to reform them. 

" They being penitent, 
The sole drift of his purpose doth extend 
Not a frown further ." 

And he restores them to their senses by the same elemental 
agency — the power of sound — by which he had deprived them 
of reason. 

" A solemn air and the best comforter 
To an unsettled fancy cure thy brains 
Now useless, boiPd within thy skull." 

Even after the charm is removed their perplexity continues, 
and they stand powerless before the superior knowledge of the 
magician. Alonzo says : — 

" This is as strange a maze as e'er men trod ; 
And there is in this business more than Nature 
Was ever conduct of. Some oracle 
Must rectify our knowledge." 

Majestic and dramatically effective as is Prospero as a power- 
ful and beneficent magician, he also fills the more prosaic role of 
" the business man." He is a complete example of that " wisdom 
of business," or " advancement in life," which forms one branch 
of Bacon's " Civil Knowledge." For with the usual contrast 
between the form and the spirit of a Shakespearian play The 
Tempest enfolds in the story of a few individuals cast away on a 
desert shore a doctrine of Civil Prudence or Knowledge, a branch 
of Philosophy, which Bacon divides into the Arts of Conversation, 
of Negotiation, and of Government, which last includes (Econom- 
ics, as a State includes a family. De Aug. Book VIII. oh. iii. 

This kind of knowledge, as Bacon points out, is exceedingly 
difficult to reduce to precept inasmuch as it appertains to all the 
variety of occasions of life. And in fact, the wisdom touching 
Negotiation or business he reports as deficient as never having 
been collected into writing. "There be no books o( it," lie says, 
"except some few scattered advertisements, that have no propor- 
tion to the magnitude of the subject." Among the many axioms 
which he lays down, he dwells particularly upon the necessity of 



666 THE TEMPEST. 

keeping order and priority both in matter and time. In The 
Advancement, speaking on this subject of prudential wisdom 
and the use of occasions, he says : " As there is an order and 
priority in matter, so is there in time, the preposterous placing 
whereof is one of the commonest errors, while men fly to their 
ends when they should intend their beginnings, and do not take 
things in order of time as they should come on, but marshal them 
according to greatness, and not according to instance ; not observ- 
ing the good precept, Quod nunc instat agamus" 1 — a precept 
which obviously enjoins the fit use of time, and which, both in its 
observance and violation, is so fully presented in The Tempest, 
that had the play been written expressly and avowedly for an ex- 
ample, it could not better serve that purpose than it now does. 

And again, in his Essay on Dispatch, he says: "Order and 
distribution and the singling out of parts is the life of dispatch." 

In all these respects Prospero's method is perfect. He promptly 
seizes the occasion which offers for the restoration of his fortunes, 
and in all his plans is governed by a wise foresight. He compre- 
hends his project as a whole and in all its parts, appoints every 
particular to time and place, exacts the strictest punctuality in the 
performance of every command, and carefully supervises each step 
in the progress of his scheme. Orderly and vigilant, he hurries 
nothing, omits nothing, but advances deliberately, gradually, and 
surely to the accomplishment of his purpose. His preeminent 
prudence is marked by his knowledge of opportunity and of the 
fitness of time for action and speech. Thus he waits for the pre- 
cise moment to arrive before disclosing to Miranda the story of 
his life. 

" Miranda. You have often 

Begun to tell me what I am, but stopp'd 
And left me to a bootless inquisition, 
Concluding, < Stay, not yet.' 

Prospero. The hour 's now come : 

The very minute bids thee ope thine ear : 
Obey and be attentive" 

And observe the test he makes of her memory in order to gain 
the precise starting-point for his story, and his further carefulness 
to waste no time, which is marked by repeated calls upon her 
attention, " Dost thou attend me ? dost thou hear ? " etc. These 

1 Despatch we now what stands as now upon. 



THE TEMPEST. 667 

breaks render the long story more natural and animated, stamp 
it with character, and shoot through the recital a thread of the 
organic idea. 

A like fitness of time both for speech and silence is observed 
by Prospero in what he says and in what he omits saying, when 
endeavoring to assure the disenchanted king of the reality of 
what is before him. 

" Alonzo. If thou beest Prospero, 

Give us particulars of thy preservation, 
How thou hast met us here, whom three hours since 
Were wreck'd upon this shore, where I have lost 
(How sharp the point of this remembrance is !) 
My dear son Ferdinand. 

Prospero. Howsoe'er you have 

Been justled from your senses, know for certain 
That I am Prospero, and that very duke 
Who was thrust forth of Milan. 

No more yet of this ; 
For 't is a chronicle of day by day, 
Not a relation for a breakfast, nor 
Befitting this first meeting." , 

In the following speech of Prospero's there is marked the 
habitual order of his mind, while the flow and sequence of the 
thought is imitative and descriptive of progress and advancement. 

" Pros. Sir, I invite your highness and your train 
To my poor cell, where you shall take your rest 
For this one night • which, part of it, I '11 waste 
With such discourse, as, I not doubt, shall make it 
Go quick away : the story of my life 
And the particular accidents gone by 
Since I came to this isle : and in the morn 
I '11 bring you to your ship ; and so to Naples ; 
Where I have hope to see the nuptials 
Of our dear-belov'd solemnized, 
And thence retire me to my Milan, where 
Every third thought shall be my grave." 

Fitness of time for speech and action is no less a rule of pro- 
priety and decorum than it is of prudence, and appertains as 
well to "wisdom of behaviour" as to " wisdom of business/' At 
the opening of Act II. the king and his companions are intro- 
duced and their respective characters placed before us in the 
fitness or unfitness, the opportuneness or impertinenoy of their 
speech. This scene affords a pointed illustration o( that branch 



668 THE TEMPEST. 

of Civil Knowledge which is termed Conversation, the end of 
which, according to* Bacon, is to provide comfort against solitude. 
But solitude here is not restricted to mere solitariness or absence 
of company, but has a wider meaning, and applies to that solitude 
of spirit which men experience in grief and sorrow, and which 
leads them to brood in silence over their own feelings. This is a 
solitude that is especially comforted by words of hope and friendly 
cheer, such as Gonzalo attempts to console Alonzo with, who 
mourns for the supposed loss of his son. Gonzalo. who is wise 
and humane, suggests to Alonzo that source of comfort which to 
the mass of men is, perhaps, more consolatory than any other, 
that is, that others are equally afflicted with themselves and from 
similar causes ; and this. too. coincides with a remark of Bacon 
in a letter to Bishop Andrews : " Amongst consolations, it is not 
the least to represent to a man's self like examples of calamity 
in others." And thus Gonzalo says to the king : — 

'• Our hinl :~ :-: 
Is common: everyday some sailor's w{fe. 
The masters of some merchant and the merchant 
Have 

He points out also — what is always a source of gratification 
— the advantage they have over others : — 

•• But far the mire 

I mean our preservation, few in 

Can speak like us : then wisely, good sir, weigh 

Our sorrow with our comfort.'' 

Gonzalo's persistent attempts to console the king expose him 
to the charge of unseasonable loquacity, and therein of a violation 
of the wisdom of behavior. To divert the mind of the monarch 
he calls his attention to the singular fact, so contrary to the order 
of nature, that their garments, notwithstanding they had been 
drenched in the sea. were nevertheless restored to their first 
freshness, and then adroitly connects this circumstance with the 
marriage of the king's daughter. Claribel. — an allusion which 
he supposes must be agreeable to the feelings of the monarch. 
But Alonzo is a king only in name ; he cherishes a willful de- 
spondency, and refuses to be comforted. He exclaims : — 

"'You cram these words into -mine ears against 

ack of my tense : Would I had never 
Married my daughter there ! for coming thence. 



THE TEMPEST. 669 

My son is lost, and in my rate, she too 
Who is so far from Italy remov'd 
I ne'er again shall see her. O thou mine heir 
Of Naples and of Milan, what strange fish 
Hath made his meal on thee ? " 

The levity and heartlessness of Antonio and Sebastian and 
their coarseness, both of mind and feeling, are apparent in their 
frivolous jeering at Gonzalo's kind-hearted attempts to comfort 
the king. They utter not a word that befits the occasion. 
Throughout the dialogue they speak out of time, interrupting 
the others with parenthetical and irrelevant comments, or taking 
the words out of the mouths of the speakers and finishing their 
sentences with some ridiculous conclusion of their own. With 
the bereaved monarch they have not the slightest sympathy. 
" He receives comfort" they say, " like cold ptorridge" A part 
of the scene may be quoted to show the unwisdom of their be- 
havior. 

" Seb. Look, he 's winding up the watch of his wit ; by and by it will 
strike. 

Gon, Sir — 

Seb. One : tell. 

Gon. When every grief is entertained that 's offered, 
Comes to the entertainer — 

Seb. A dollar. 

Gon. Dolour comes to him, indeed : you have spoken truer than you 
purposed. 

Seb. You have taken it wiselier than I meant you should. 

Gon. Therefore, my lord, — 

Ant. Fie, what a spendthrift is he of his tongue ! 

Alon. I pr'ythee, spare. 

Gon. Well, I have done : but yet — 

Seb. He will be talking. 

Ant. Which, of he or Adrian, for a good wager, first begins to crow ? 

Seb. The old cock. 

Ant. The cockerel. 

Seb. Done. The wager ? 

Ant. A laughter. 

Seb. A match ! 

Adr Though this island seem to be desert, — 

Ant. Ha, ha, ha ! 

Seb. So, you 're paid. 

Adr. Uninhabitable and almost inaccessible, — 

Seb. Yet,— 

Adr. Yet, — 



670 THE TEMPEST. 

He could not miss 't. 
Adr. It must needs be of subtle, tender and delicate temperance. 
Temperance was a delicate wench. 
_^v. and a subtle; as he most learnedly deliverd," etc. 

This frivolous conversation, so unfitted to time, place, and per- 
son, is continued at some length. The utter absence of all frater- 
nal feeling in Sebastian is particularly expressed in the ungener- 
ous and most unseasonable speech he makes to Alonzo : — 

•• TTe have lost your son. 
I fear, forever : Milan and Xaples have 



Tha 




: \ . . 1 




Yo% 








A ' : 


nzo. So is 


the dear'st 


of the loss. 

Mv lord Sebastian 


The 




eak doth lack some gentleness 


Anc 


: J:."' 


you 


■-:,':> :'■.-: s: --: 


Wh 


en you should bring the} 




>_-'-, 


Very well. 






An: 




And most 


cfiiru 



Francisco is a character who has but one speech given to hini, 
and that one of a few lines only. Though so short, it indicates 
the speaker's character, for it is eminently timely and consolatory. 
Being a story, moreover, of a strong swimmer struggling for life 
and coining safelv to shore, it is not without significance as an 
instance of the best possible employment of time and of difficul- 
ties stoutly overcome. 

The conspiracy, which Antonio and Sebastian form against the 
life of the king, is an example of the truth that Opportunity is 
suggestive of good or evil according to the characters of those to 
whom it presents itself. The villainy which lurks under the 
flippancy and indolence of Antonio and Sebastian is brought to 
the surface at once through the influence of opportunity. The 
deep sleep that Prospero. by the agency of Ariel, causes to fall 
upon the king and Gonzalo suggests to the mind of Antonio their 
instant murder. Yet this very readiness to seize an opportunity 
proves how little he has of true prudence or sense of the fitness of 
time, for even supposing the plot successful, neither he nor Sebas- 
tian can enjoy the fruits of their guilt, as there seems no possible 
means of escaping from the island. This is an instance of that 
••preposterous placing of time" which Bacon sets down as one of 



THE TEMPEST. 671 

the commonest errors. All the incitements with which Antonio 
prompts to the murder of the king the more inert, though not less 
villainous, Sebastian are drawn from the fitness of the occasion. 
He points to the drowning of the king's son, Ferdinand ; the dis- 
tance (as measured in time) of Naples from Tunis, and the con- 
sequent inability of Claribel, the heiress of the throne, to main- 
tain her rights, and especially to the fact that Alonzo was then 
lying buried in sleep as offering an instant opportunity of securing 
the crown. The scene is too long to quote, but it is an admirable 
example of the skill with which the dramatist, while painting the 
moral portrait of these villains, yet couches the dialogue in diction 
and metaphor that quicken every phrase with the organic idea. 

In these two sneering heartless nobles, there is exhibited a pre- 
dominance of the devilish element in civilized man, whereas the 
animal side of his nature finds an equally marked representation 
in the drunken Stephano. Reckless and improvident, Stephano 
lives only for the present moment and the immediate gratification 
of his appetite. " Tell not me," he says, " when the butt is out, 
we will drink water ; not a drop before." With his head fuddled 
with wine, he vapors and he bullies, but he can neither plan nor 
execute any fixed purpose. Such a matter as the murder of a 
powerful magician he undertakes without one thought of its feasi- 
bility, and is diverted from his project by the first trifle that 
catches his eye. He is not without a strong dash of humor and 
drunken good-fellowship, but his benevolence has an eye to his 
own advantage. On his first entrance, he virtually admits that 
his life is governed by no self-command nor sense of the fitness 
of the occasion. Having just escaped drowning, he reels in, 
bottle in hand, and singing a sailor's ditty. 

" I shall no more to sea, to sea, 
Here shall I die ashore. 
This is a scurvy tune to sing at a man's funeral. Well, here V my comfort" — 
[Drinks. 

In Stephano's opinion, his bottle (or that which ministers to 
appetite) comprises the whole body of law, philosophy, and di- 
vinity. It is his sure source of courage and comfort under all 
the sorrows of life. He thinks it equally good for bodily ailments. 
Finding the trembling Caliban on the ground, and supposing that 
he is suffering from an agu§, ho at once proceeds io "reoaver" 
him by administering a potion of his panacea, at the same time 



672 THE TEMPEST. 

intimating that it is no bad preceptor of language, — in which he 
contrasts with Prospero. 

" Caliban. The spirit torments me : O ! 

Stephano. This is some monster of the isle with four legs, who hath got, as 
I take it, an ague. Where the devil should he learn our language ? I will give 
him some relief, if it be but for that. If I can recover him and keep him tame 
and get to Naples with him, he 's a present for any emperor that ever trod on 
neat's-leather. 

Cal. Do not torment me ; pr'ythee ; I '11 bring my wood home faster. 

Ste. He is in his Jit now and does not talk after the wisest. He shall taste 
of my bottle : if he have never drunk wine afore, it will go near to remove his ft. 
If I can recover him and keep him tame, I will not take too much for him ; he 
shall pay for him that hath him, and that soundly. 

Cal. Thou dost me yet but little hurt ; thou wilt anon, I know it by thy 
trembling : now Prosper works on thee. 

Ste. Come on your ways : open your mouth ; here is that which will give 
language to you, cat. Open your mouth ; this will shake your shaking, I can 
tell you, and that soundly : you cannot tell who is your friend : open your chaps 
again," etc., etc. 

As Stephano's bottle contains his code of faith he humorously 
uses it to administer oaths. 

" Ste. How didst thou escape ? How cam'st thou hither ? swear by this 
bottle how thou cam'st hither. I escaped upon a butt of sack, which the sailors 
heaved overboard, by this bottle ! which I made of the bark of a tree with 
mine own hands since I was cast ashore. 

Cal. I '11 swear upon that bottle to be thy true subject. For the liquor is not 
earthly. 

Ste. Here, kiss the book. 
Cal. Hast thou not dropp'd out of heaven ? 

Ste. Out of the moon, I do assure thee : I am the man in the moon when 
time was. 

Cal. I have seen thee in her, and I do adore thee : 
My mistress shew'd me thee and thy dog and thy bush. 
Ste. Come, swear to that • kiss the book. 
Cal. I '11 show thee every fertile inch of the island ; 
And I will kiss thy foot : I pr'ythee, be my god." 

These last words contain a thought which Bacon has also ex- 
pressed (Nov. Org. Book I. Aph. 129) : "Let a man consider 
what a difference there is between the life of man in the most 
cultured province of Europe and in the wildest and most barbar- 
ous district of New India, he will feel it to be great enough to 
justify the saying that ' man is a god to man.' " 



THE TEMPEST. 673 

Caliban is the savage man, ignorant, indolent, malignant. He 
represents man at the lowest ebb of knowledge, and is idealized 
as far below ordinary humanity as Prospero the philosopher, the 
lord of nature, is above it. He seems more like some grotesque 
animal than a man. Prospero humanely attempts to civilize this 
savage, but he can do no more than endow him with language. 
He teaches him how 

" To name the bigger light, and how the less, 
That burn by day and night ; " 

but the chief use and profit Caliban derives from speech is to 
curse his preceptor. 

" You taught me language; and my profit on J t 
Is, / know how to curse. The red plague rid you 
For learning me your language" 

Caliban lives in a twilight of intellect, the higher faculties of 
the soul having hardly room to expand, they are so shut in and 
smothered by his dark earthy nature. He exhibits understand- 
ing — as the brute does — and there is in him a spark of reason, 
but it is wholly undeveloped. 

Caliban's dialect is poetical, but it is because his thoughts are 
all sensuous and lie close to the imagery of Nature, which is 
always picturesque. The poetry is in the reader, not in him. He 
has no fancy, no assimilative power, and but little perception of 
relations. His thoughts dwell with the concrete. Witness his 
suit to Stephano : — 

" I pr'ythee, let me bring thee where crabs grow ; 
And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts ; 
Shew thee a jay's nest, and instruct thee how 
To snare the nimble marmoset ; I '11 bring thee 
To clust'ring filberds, and sometimes I '11 get thee 
Young sea-mells from the rock : Wilt thou go with me ? M 

This is suggestive to the imagination of the reader, but it is 
matter of fact to Caliban. It is as if some ape or wild animal 
should offer to befriend one with his knowledge of wood-era ft. 

Prospero, who may be supposed to understand Caliban, thus 
describes him : — 

"A devil, a born devil, on whose nature 

Nurture can never slick ; on whom mv pains. 
Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost ; 
43 



674 THE TEMPEST. 

::. ige his body uglier grows, 
a : his niina eankT 

But let the *• servant-monster " have justice: he :- o : : all ani- 
mal, nor all devil. In this rudimentary man there are discernible 
undeveloped powers :• a germ of y and reverence and a glim- 

mering sense of beauty. He is alive, mo: - : he power of 

sound, and has dreams that make him weep. — dreams of unattain- 
able happiness, blind stirrings of the soul, that prove that there is 
in him a better nature, and that he is to some extent an upward- 
looking creature. He says to Stephano : — 

Sounds, and sweet airs, thai we delight and hurt not. 
v : me ::mes a thousand twangling instruments 
W31 hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices 
I I then had waVd after long sleep, 

WUl make me sleep again • and then, in dreaming, 
ight would open and shew riches 
Beady to drop upon nie, that, when I wak'd, 
I cry'd to dream again." 

Ignorant and wicked as Caliban is. he is neither so vulgar nor 
so corrupt as the more civilized Stephano. He is, moreover, 
earnest in his purposes and cunning enough to know the value 
of opportunity. There is even something of moral disgust in the 
feeling with which he views the folly of Stephano, who tarns 
away from the all-important business of securing the sovereignty 
of the isle by the murder of the 7~ :; :~ :::■ the purpose of pos- 
sessing himself of the glittering apparel of ducal rank, — a folly 
not unparalleled in the career of many \ 

To deal : :h luggage? Let it alone 

And do the murther first. . . 
$:*. Be you quiet monster. 

We shall lose our time, 
all be tura'd to barnacles, or to apes 
Witih Llainous If 

Nor is Caliban's brain so crass and heavy, his reason so be-. 

dimmed, that he is not sensible of his own folly and able to rate 
Stephano at his true worth when once his eyes are opened. 

•• I "11 be wise hereafter, 
And seek for grace. What a thrice-double ass 
Was I to take this drunkard for a god 

And 'corship this duU fool . " 



THE TEMPEST. 675 

The true end of knowledge, as Bacon never tires of teaching, 
is its application to the use and benefit of man ; and the fairest 
offspring of Philosophy is a perfect Humanity; a Pity that is 
awakened by every form of distress. In the very front and pre- 
face of his work Bacon puts this solemn prayer : — 

" I most humbly and fervently pray to God the Father, God 
the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, that, remembering the sorrows 
of mankind and the pilgrimage of this our life, wherein we icear 
out days few and evil, they will vouchsafe through my hands to 
endow the human family with new mercies" 

The ideal figure of the philosopher in " Solomon's home " " had 
an aspect as if he pitied men" — and again in the Redargutio 
the same thing is repeated. 1 

This pity, charity, mercy — the offspring of Philosophy — is 
represented by Prospero's daughter, Miranda. Her culture is 
particularly noted. Prospero says : — 

' * Here in this island we arrived ; and here 
Have I, thy school-master, made thee more profit 
Than other princes can, that have more time 
For vainer hours and tutors not so careful." 

Act I. Sc. 2. 

Unsullied purity of mind and tenderest compassion form this 
exquisite creation. She is pity's self. Her heart overflows with 
commiseration, her eyes brim with tears at every sight of suffer- 
ing, at every tale of woe. The direful spectacle of the wreck 
touches " the very virtue of compassion in her." She says : — 

"Oh, I have suffered 
With those I saw suffer : a brave vessel 
Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her, 
Dash'd all to pieces. Oh ! the cry did knock 
Against my very heart. Poor souls, they perish'd. 
Had I been any god of power, I would 
Have sunk the sea within the earth, or e'er 
It should the good ship so have swallow* d, and 
The fraughting souls within her." 

Act I. So. 2. 

Miranda's every thought is innocent and pure, unmixed with 
baser matter. There is no stain of earth upon her. She is the 
rare consummate flower of the highest culture, impossible to be 

1 "Aspectus admodum plaoidi et sereni ; nisi quod oris compositio trat tanquam 
miser antis." Vol. VII. p. 50. 



676 THE TEMPEST. 

found, no doubt, on this earth, but blooming in matchless beauty 
in the ideal world of Shakespeare. It is the union of this supreme 
moral excellence with industry, honor, self-restraint, and law in 
the person of the legitimate prince which forms the task that 
Philosophy taxes its powers to perform. The prince, too, must 
prove himself worthy of Miranda. He is. therefore, subjected to 
the severest labor in menial task-work : but Ferdinand recognizes 
the intrinsic dignity of labor. He exalts his mean employment 
by the worth of his purpose. He sees that toil has, beyond its 
immediate end, a higher and nobler reward : that 

•■ Some hinds of base\- - 
Are nobly undergone, and that ??wst poor matters 
Point to rich end? 

It is to rain the highest moral excellence that he become - 
patient log-man/' though, were it not for the mistress that " makes 
his labours pleasures." he would 

w No more endure 
This wooden slavery than to suffer 
The flesh-fly bloic his mouth" 

Miranda thus becomes to him both Prospero's gift and M his 
acquisition worthily purchas'd." 

The masque (a device of Prospero's. which proves that he. 
like the writer of The Tempest itself, is both poet and philoso- 
pher') that is presented before Ferdinand and Miranda after their 
betrothment. may be supposed emblematic of the prosperity of 
the State which must follow upon so perfect a government. Juno 
promises increase of population and Ceres agricultural plenty, 
whilst the dance of the nymphs and the reapers indicates the hap- 
piness of the people. 

lies which exhibit a practical application of the rules of 
"Conversation" and of M Negotiation " have been pointed our: 
the play treats, moreover, of the fundamental principles on which 
rests the Art of Government, which art is the third division 
that Bacon makes of Civil Prudence, but with regard to this he 
prescribes silence to himself, and therefore it is not possible to say 
whether there are any parts of the play which would coincide with 
such particular precepts as he would have laid down on that sub- 
ject : but it is clear that the play very fully exemplifies the Baco- 
nian doctrine that M Knowledge is Power : " that there is no true 



THE TEMPEST. 677 

sovereignty but of intellect and virtue, and that he only is king and 
entitled to leadership whose wisdom and skill can carry the State 
or the individual through whatever storms or disasters may hap- 
pen. The opening scene puts forward this, the reigning idea of 
the play, with much force and significance. The king's ship is 
laboring in the storm, and the master and crew are straining every 
nerve to rescue the vessel from destruction. The safety and lives 
of all depend upon action, courage, and seamanship. Meantime 
the royal party stand idly and helplessly by, interfering with the 
sailors by their presence and troubling the busy boatswain with 
useless and unseasonable questions. But how little respect does 
king or duke or learned counselor receive at the hands of the im- 
patient mariner ! Here, where death is staring them in the face, 
all political and factitious distinctions vanish, and he only is king 
whose skill and knowledge can cope with the storm and save the 
ship from wreck. 

" Alon. Good boatswain, have care. Where's the Master? Play the 
men. 

Boats. I pray now, keep below. 

Ant. Where 's the Master, Boson ? 

Boats. Do you not hear him ? You mar our labour. Keep your cabins : 
you do assist the storm. 

Gonz. Nay, good, be patient. 

Boats. When the sea is. Hence ! What care these roarers for the name of 
king 1 To cabin ; silence ! trouble us not. 

Gonz. Good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard. 

Boats. None that I more love than myself. You are a counsellor : if you 
can command the elements to silence and work the peace of the present, we will 
not hand a rope more. Use your authority : if you cannot, give thanks yon have 
lived so long, and make yourself ready in your cabin for the mischance of the 
hour, if it so hap. Cheerly, good hearts ! Out of our way, 1 say ! " 

Clearly, statecraft is of but little avail in this emergency, and 
the true king here is he who is the best seaman. 

The Shakespearian drama is filled with contrasts ; its method 
necessitates it, and in this play one of the most obvious is that 
between Prospero, the philosopher, benevolent in heart and wise 
in intellect, the true king of men, and Caliban, the child of 
ignorance and vice, almost incapable of culture, representing the 
lowest and vilest of the plebs. Under a fantastic and uncouth 
form, in keeping with the wild wonders of this fairy-tale, Caliban 
reveals mental and moral features that make him a type of the 



678 THE TEMPEST. 

lowest order of the State. He is the ideal radical, the normal 
democrat, — bj no means the cultivated gentleman who finds in 
metaphysical speculations and a belief in the perfectibility of man 
his democratic faith, and whose opinions are rather a sentiment, 
a large and liberal hope for the future of the race than sound 
convictions from the practical and prosaic lessons of history and 
experience, nor the honest and intelligent artisan or yeoman, 
whose skill and labor are the true wealth and strength of a nation, 
— but the ignorant and envious hewer of wood and drawer of 
water, who cherishes no feeling towards that superiority of intel- 
ligence and character by whose humane instructions he is bene- 
fited, but rancor, envy, hate, and fear. This class existed in 
England in the days of Shakespeare, with features far more 
strong and repulsive than anything ever known among the white 
race in this country. Villeinage, or serfdom, which had existed in 
England for centuries, had not altogether disappeared as an actual 
institution in the reigns of Elizabeth and the first James ; and 
its effects, like those of all slavery, in brutifying and degrading to 
an animal condition the human being, must at that period have 
been very apparent among the lowest class of peasantry. It is 
this class of low serfs and slaves, with their brutal and ungoverned 
instincts, their sullen and secret discontent, and their dim dreams 
of bettering themselves by change, which find an ideal portrait 
in Caliban. The truthful and tender Miranda recoils from him 
with an instinctive dread of the savage lawlessness that lurks in 

his nature. 

" It is a villain (villein) 
I do not love to look upon. 
Prospero. But as 't is 

We cannot miss him ; he does make our fire, 
Fetch in our wood and serves in offices 
That profit us." 

Act I. Sc. 2. 

Caliban is strong in the theory of self-government. He does 
not see why he has not the right to be "his own king," and 
gives no heed to the fact that he has very plainly disclosed by the 
atrocity he attempted to commit in Prospero's cell that he by no 
means understands by self-government the duty of restraining his 
passions, but only the right to perpetrate any outrage to which he 
feels disposed. Caliban's statement of his case, however, when 
looked at from his point of view (and Caliban, besides his polit- 



THE TEMPEST. 679 

ical significance, may stand for the savage protesting against the 
rapacity of civilized man) is not without pertinency; and ob- 
servable, too, is the democratic instinct with which he seizes upon 
a physical necessity common alike to high and low — in which 
respect, therefore, he is on an equality with his master — as an 
excuse for not performing his work with more diligence. 

" / must eat my dinner. 
This island 's mine by Sycorax, my mother, 
Which thou tak'stfrom me. . . . 

I am all the subjects that you have 
Which first was mine own king ; and here you sty me 
In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me 
The rest o' th' island." * 

Act I. Sc. 2. 

But notwithstanding his rebellious spirit and claim to be freed 
from all restraint, his nature is one of the most abject servility, 
and he is ready to become the veriest slave of any worthless 
demagogue who will administer to his appetites and indulge his 
passions. Stephano, who makes him drunk, becomes his god. 
No bitterer satire was ever drawn of the impulses of the ignorant 
and vicious many than the picture of Caliban, when throwing off 
the restraints of a wholesome and reasonable authority, — re- 
straints entirely compatible with self-respect, — he becomes the 
" foot-licker " of the worthless Stephano, and passes exultingly 
into a state of the most abject and contemptible servitude, the 
poor beast all the while thinking that he has vastly bettered his 
condition, and shouting, in his drunken joy, — 

" Freedom, hey-day ! hey-day, freedom ! freedom ! hey-day, freedom ! " 

Stephano's power over Caliban is maintained chiefly by yield- 
ing to his wishes and adopting his animosities ; and mark the 
catch that Stephano teaches him, " Thought is free." But free 
thought is not a safe guide unless accompanied by moral prinei- 
ple. Hence Ariel, playing the tune upon his tabor, leads the 
low conspirators through 

" Tooth'd briers, sharp furzes, pricking i^orse and thorns" — 

and at last leaves them dancing up to their ohins in a pool of 
filthy water. 

Prospero aims at the reformation of his enemies through per- 
suasion and contrition. He is the philosopher profoundly versed 



680 THE TEMPEST. 

in the knowledge of causes — who, by appeals to the reason and 
imagination, works effects upon the elements of character and 
not merely upon bodily existence. The only charm he uses is 
the power of sound, — and sound, in Baconian language, is " a 
spiritual species" — and this brings us to the character of Ariel. 
As a dramatic personage Ariel is a spirit of the air, affined with 
the winds and gales, as is manifest in the last scene, where Pros- 
pero, promising the king " auspicious gales " to bear along his ship, 
leaves it in charge of Ariel. But, allegorically, Ariel is the air, 
the vehicle of sound, that is, breath or speech in its highest 
utterance of eloquence an,d song, whereby the philosopher and 
poet work their strongest efSects upon the imagination and master 
the minds of men. He is the ministering spirit that " cleaves 
to the thoughts " of the philosopher and performs all commands 
" to the syllable." But as speech is but audible thought, and is 
identified with it, and as the laws of nature, through which the 
philosopher wields a power over the elements, exist as ideas in 
the mind, Ariel may be considered the fanciful embodiment of 
that knowledge of causes, or of what Bacon calls " forms," which 
is synonymous with power, the power to operate effects. " Well 
he conceives." He bridges the gap between Nature and Man. 
A creature of the air, he " comes with a thought" but is confined 
to no particular element ; he is at home in all, — 

"Be'tto^, 

To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride 
On the curVd clouds" 

In obedience to his master, he can 

" Tread the ooze 
Of the salt deep, 

And run upon the sharp wind of the north, 
And do him business in the veins o' th' earth 
When it is bak'd with frost" 

This omniformity is emphasized by Prospero's commanding 
him to take the shape of a sea-nymph, which, as there is nothing 
in the action of the play demanding such a form in particular, 
and as, moreover, he is under an injunction to remain invisible 
to all eyes but his master's, is a requirement intended apparently 
to show to the spectators Ariel's " quality " or power over forms 
rather than for any dramatic purpose. 



THE TEMPEST. 681 

" Go make thyself like a nymph o' th' sea ; be subject 
To no sight but thine and mine y invisible 
To every eye-ball else. Go, take this shape 
And hither come in %" 

In the tempest he appears under the form of flame, fire, and 
sound. 

" Jove's lightnings, the precursors 
Of the dreadful thunder-claps, more momentary 
And sight-outrunning were not ; the fire and cracks 
Of sulphurous roaring, the most mighty Neptune 
Seem to besiege." 

In the masque Ariel presents Ceres, a fact not at all important 
that the reader should know, but which is mentioned as if to re- 
mind him of Ariel's power over form. 

It is through Ariel that all Prospero's purposes are effected. 
An impersonation of science, he is in nature's secrets, can clothe 
himself with her forms and wield her powers. Over the minds 
of men he is equally potent ; understanding all the causes and 
motives which rule their souls and natures ; and combining with 
this skill the power of sound, he is enabled by melodious strains 
to excite the fancy to love or by reverberations of thunder to ter- 
rify the conscience and madden the memory with remorse. 

But Ariel (knowledge), the servant of Prospero, the philoso- 
pher, needs discipline. Once this delicate spirit was subjected to 
Sycorax, the witch and votaress of ignorance and superstition, and 
upon his refusing to act " her earthy and abhorred commands " 
was imprisoned "by help of her more potent ministers " in a 
cloven pine, where 

" He did vent his groans 
As fast as mill wheels strike," l — 

a check upon scientific inquiry that ignorance could not after- 
wards remove. It was Prospero (the true philosopher) that Bel 
free the mind from this state of bondage and subjected it io an 
enlightened discipline. By its aid, too, philosophy intends to 
accomplish no less difficult a task than that of placing the true 
sovereignty of the State upon a, basis of intelligence and virtue. 
And to render Ariel more diligent in effecting this end, Prospero 

1 Will the reader ]);m<Ioii tlic (HVicioiisncss iliaic;«lls .ittniiion to the rare beautj 
and felicity of this simile in a play that inculcates that it is bj industry and 
alone that the powers of Nature ran be subjected to tlu> service oi m 



682 THE TEMPEST. 

promises to set him free after it shall be accomplished ; for thought 
and speech may well be free when under the guidance of moral 
rectitude, and the State may safely permit the widest latitude of 
opinion when the government is of that excellence that the ruler 
is but the outward symbol of justice and mercy. It is worthy of 
remark, too, that Ariel, though but air, is delicately touched with 
human sympathy, as if to indicate the humanizing influence of 
letters, often called " the humanities." 

This comedy evidently contains many correspondences with Ba- 
con's doctrines of Civil Prudence ; it also has scenes and inci- 
dents that seem to put into dramatic action some of his most 
abstruse yet peculiar and original tenets of Natural Philosophy, 
and especially of that branch of it which he terms Operative Phi- 
losophy. 

A few short statements of some of his divisions will here be 
necessary. 

He divides Natural Philosophy into Speculative or the Inqui- 
sition of Causes, and Operative or the Production of Effects. 

Of these, the first is exemplified in Lear, the second in Othello 
and The Tempest ; Othello being an example of the effects pro- 
duced by logic and words, The Tempest, of the effects produced 
by a knowledge and practical application of causes. 

Bacon adopts the usual division of causes, into the Efficient 
and Material, and the Formal and Final; of which the two 
former appertain to " Physic " and produce " Mechanics ; " the 
latter to " Metaphysic " (in Bacon's sense of that term), and 
produce Magic. But " Magic " here does not refer to the Natu- 
ral Magic " which flutters," as he says, " about so many books 
embracing credulous and superstitious traditions," but he under- 
stands by it " the science which applies the knowledge of the hid- 
den forms (formal causes) to the production of wonderful oper- 
ations" De Aug. Book III. ch. v. 

Of the scholastic term " form " or " formal cause," it may 
suffice to say that it signifies that which constitutes " the very 
nature of the thing," or " the law which makes a thing what it is," 
so that he who knows this law or form of a nature can superinduce 
that nature on anybody within possible limits. 

Natural Philosophy, furthermore, has two branches, one con- 
cerning creatures and one concerning natures. 

By natures Bacon means abstract qualities, and of them makes 



THE TEMPEST. 683 

two classes, one of which he calls " appetites and motions" and 
by the word " motion" it may be observed, Bacon signifies passions, 
desires, emotions. The same peculiar use of the word is met 
with in the plays, as in Othello, " minerals that waken motion," 
" to cool our raging motions," or in Cymbeline, " there is no mo- 
tion that tends to vice in man," etc. Bacon's language in many 
passages leads to the inference that he thought all matter en- 
dowed with passions and perceptions. By the terms " appetites 
and motions " he refers to those tendencies and inclinations in 
matter to act according to its attractions and repulsions, its resist- 
ance, expansion, contraction, elasticity, and the like. 

These " motions " of matter he holds as the proper objects of 
philosophy. In his treatise, " Thoughts on the Nature of Things," 
he has the following : — 

" The principles, fountains, causes, and forms of motions, that 
is, the appetites and passions of every hind of matter, are the 
proper objects of philosophy. . . . We should investigate those 
appetites and inclinations of things, by which all that variety of 
effects and changes, which we see in the work of nature and art, 
is made and brought about. And we should try to enchain na- 
ture, like Proteus ; for the right discovery and distinction of the 
hinds of motions are the true bonds of Proteus. For according 
as motions, that is, incentives and restraints, can be spurred on 
or tied up, so follows conversion and transformation of matter 
itself." Vol. X. p. 295. 

With these appetites and motions in matter, which Bacon thus 
lays down as the proper objects of philosophy, the appetites and 
motions of mind are entirely analogous ; for in De Augmentis. 
Book III. ch. iv., after enumerating the "motions" of matter, he 
adds: " For voluntary motion in animals, the motion that takes 
place in the action of the senses, motion of imagination, appetite, 
and will, motion of the mind, determination, and intellectual 
faculties, these I refer to their proper doctrines ; " from which it 
is manifest that man's passions and appetites belong to the same 
class with what he calls the "appetites and motions" of inani- 
mate matter, and only do not appertain to fcw Physic," because they 
have their own proper doctrine, that is, the philosophy of Hu- 
manity; and it follows that as they are spurred on or tied up, so 
will ensue change and conversion in the natures o\ men, 

This similitude between the desires and passions of animate 



684 THE TEMPEST. 

and inanimate matter being apparent, the pertinency of the ex- 
ample given in the play of the aim and end of the Baconian 
philosophy is also obvious. This end was the generation of a 
new nature on a given nature, which, when carried far enough, 
would transform one body into another; as by generating or 
superinducing the density, color, ductility, incorruptibility, and 
other properties of gold on iron, or other baser metal, it would 
lead of course to the conversion of the one metal into the other. 

In the first aphorism of the second book of the Novum Or- 
ganum are laid down the respective aims of Human Knowledge 
and Human Power. 

" On a given nature to generate and superinduce a new nature 
or new natures is the work and aim of Human Power. Of a 
given nature to discover the form ... is the work and aim of 
Human Knowledge," that is, " the scope and end of human power 
is to give neio qualities to bodies, while the scope and end of hu- 
man knowledge is to ascertain the formal cause of all the qualities 
of which bodies are possessed" Preface to Phil. Work, by Ellis, 
p. 68. 

The knowledge of formal causes and consequent power to pro- 
duce effects are impersonated in Ariel. He is acquainted with the 
inmost natures of those he works upon, and also with the causes 
that can " spur on " or " tie 1 up " the emotions and passions that 
can produce a change in such natures. He therefore applies to 
each the influence calculated to effect the end. His command 
over forms is imaged in his omniformity, the poet availing himself 
of the equivocation between the scholastic and ordinary senses of 
the word. His ability to influence the minds of men is seen in 
the frenzy and dismay with which he fills the king and his com- 
pany by the fearful sights and sounds of the storm. Prospero 
asks : — 

" Who was so firm, so constant that this coil 
Would not infect his reason ? 
Ariel. Not a soul 

But felt a fever of the mad, and play 'd 
Some tricks of desperation." 

He is equally potent over the softer passions, and at the bid- 
. ding of Prospero, awakens at once a mutual love between Ferdi- 

" Untie the spell," says Prospero to Ariel, in reference to Caliban and his com- 
panions. 



THE TEMPEST. 685 

nand and Miranda. It might be supposed that it required no 
magic, no " hidden form " nor other " metaphysical aid " to pro- 
duce this result in the case of such a pair of lovers, but the play 
refers their passion to a preternatural origin, and attributes it to 
the power of Ariel. Prospero says : — 

" At the first sight 
They have chang'd eyes. Delicate Ariel, 
I '11 set thee free for this," — 

and so effectually does the spell " spur on " the growth of their 
reciprocal love, that Prospero deems it prudent to put a check on 
this swift " business," which he does by binding or " tying up " 
Ferdinand's spirit as in a dream. 

" My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up." 

In the case of the change wrought in the nature of Alonzo, the 
" restraints " upon his bad, and the " incentives " to his good, im- 
pulses are placed, u as it were, before our eyes." The influence 
set in motion is in the nature of that which causes religious con- 
version ; a moral force, which Bacon speaks of as the most power- 
ful of all others to work a change in the characters of men. In 
his " Discourse touching Helps for the Intellectual Powers," he 
says : " The will of man is that which admitteth most medicine to 
cure and alter it. The most sovereign of all is Religion, which is 
able to change and transform it in the deepest and most inward 
inclinations and motions " (Vol. XIII. p. 300). 

The sentiment of religion and of responsibility to Divine 
Power is excited by appeals to the conscience that arouse a pro- 
found sense of guilt and terrify the imagination with the dreadful 
retribution such guilt is sure to incur at the hands of an offended 
Deity. These terrors have often been known to convulse the sin- 
ner and deprive him temporarily of reason; and even when ex- 
perienced in a much lighter degree they produce a state of mind 
which finds no relief from its affliction but in a sincere penitence, 
and a new growth in the will of a resolve to live a purer life. 
Entirely analogous with this is the process Ariel employs, although 
to avoid all irreverence such process is given a classic form. 
Assuming the portentous shape of a Harpy, he appears t^ Alonzo 
and his companions, and denounces their guilt and threatens 
retribution in tones which sound in their ears like the voice of 
Nature herself crying out against, their sin. 



686 THE TEMPEST. 

" You are three men of sin, whom Destiny, 
(That hath to instrument this lower world 
And what is in J t) the never-surfeited sea 
Hath caused to belch up ; You ! 1 — and on this island 
Where man doth not inhabit ; you 'mongst men 
Being most unfit to live. I have made you mad ; 

. . . You fools ! I and my fellows 
Are ministers of Fate . . . 

But remember — 
For that 's my business to you — that you three 
From Milan did supplant good Prosper o ; 
Expos' d unto the sea, which hath requit it, 
Him and his innocent child : for which foul deed 
The Powers, delaying, not forgetting, have 
Incensed the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures, 
Against your peace. Thee of thy son, Alonzo, 
They have bereft ; and do pronounce by me 
Lingering perdition — worse than any death 
Can be at once — shall step by step attend 
You and your ways • ivhose wraths to guard you from,* — 
Which here, in this most desolate isle, else falls 
Upon your heads, — is nothing but hearth sorrow 
And a clear life ensuing" [He vanishes in thunder. 

Notwithstanding the classic spirit 2 of this passage — classic in 
the introduction of the Harpy, but more especially in making 
Destiny or Fate the ruling power of the world — the motives 
that act upon Alonzo are those terrors of conscience commonly 
used to produce religious conversion and change of heart. He 
exclaims : — 

" Oh, it is monstrous, monstrous ! 
Methought the billows spoke and told me of it j 
The winds did sing it to me ; and the thunder, 
That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced 
The name of Prosper : it did bass my trespass. 
Therefore my son V th 9 ooze is bedded • and 
I '11 seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded 
And with him there lie mudded." 

1 "You!" This reading, suggested by a writer in the Atlantic Monthly, varies 
so little from the text of the folio, is so apposite in its meaning, and so consonant 
with the method of the play, which requires a copious infusion into its diction of 
small monosyllabic words, standing singly, that it is adopted here without a doubt of 
its correctness. 

2 Mr. Verplanck, whose criticisms are always as sound as they are elegantly ex- 
pressed, calls attention, in his notes on this play, to the classical tone and spirit of 
the piece. And his remarks, though justified by the style of the whole play, are par- 
ticularly so by the speech of Ariel, as the minister and mouthpiece of Fate, denoun- 
cing the guilt of Alonzo and the others. 



THE TEMPEST. 687 

These terrors and the contrition they inspire so work upon 
Alonzo that a new nature is " superinduced " upon his disposition 
and a thorough change is wrought in his soul. Even as a base 
metal is transmuted to a noble one, so is Alonzo transformed 
from a bad man to a good one, and when restored to his senses, 
sues for pardon for his wrongs, and hastens to make all the 
reparation in his power. 

There is, however, another particular connected with this 
change or conversion, which must be noticed, that is, the latent 
process, of which mention is made by Bacon, and described as 
" the latent process, which in every case of generation and motion 
is carried on from the manifest efficient and the manifest material 
to the form which is engendered." Nov. Org. Book II. Aph. 1. 

The latent process is that secret, continuous, invisible grada- 
tion of movements, which takes place in every change or when- 
ever a body passes from one state to another, as in the familiar 
instances of water becoming ice or steam ; or to use the instances 
given by Bacon, " when enquiry is made concerning the voluntary 
motion of animals, from the first impression on the imagination 
and the continued efforts of the spirit up to the bendings and 
movements of the limbs, or concerning the motion of the tongue 
and lips and other instruments, and the changes through which 
it passes till it comes to the utterance of articulate sounds." Nov. 
Org. Book II. Aph. 5 ; also Aph. 1. 

In the case of Prospero's "untying the spell" and restoring 
Alonzo and his companions to their senses, the latent process or 
change that is then going forward through minute and imper- 
ceptible degrees is thus described, the poet using for purpose of 
illustration some of the grander processes of Nature. 

11 The charm dissolves apace ; 
And as the morning steals upon the night, 
Melting the darkness, so their rising senses 
Begin to chase the ignorant fumes thai mantle 
Their clearer reason." . . . 

"Their understanding 
Begins to swell, and the approaching tidi 
Will shortly,//// the reasonable shore 

That now lies foul and muddy. Not our of them 
That yet looks on me or would know me." 

Alonzo being restored to his senses, Prospero addresses him: 



688 THE TEMPEST. 

" Behold, sir King, 
The wronged duke of Milan. Prospero. 

Alonzo. Whe'r thou beest he or no, 
Or some enchanted trifle to abuse rue 
As late I have been, I not know : thy pulse 
Beats, as of flesh and blood : and since I saw thee 
Th' affliction of my mind amends, with which, 
I fear, a madness held me. This must crave — 
An if this be at all — a most strange story. 
Thy dukedom I resign, and do entreat 
Thou pardon me my wrongs." 

It will be observed that the change in Alonzo is not brought 
about by argument nor by any appeal to the logical faculties, but 
by inspiring him with a feeling of penitence, " a heart's sorrow," 
that regenerates his nature, leading him to entreat pardon and 
make willing atonement for his wrongs. 

This conversion of Alonzo may be taken as an ingeniously 
devised incident, by which the operation of a formal cause " is set, 
as it were, before our eyes," but. although Bacon was writing the 
Novum Org anion, in which this doctrine was first announced, at 
the very time The Tempest was written, he did not give it to the 
world for at least eight years afterwards. 

Having treated of operation by forms. Bacon next speaks of 
"the summary law of nature " or God's creative work in nature. 

" But knowledges are as pyramids, whereof history and expe- 
rience are the basis. And so of Natural Philosophy the basis is 
Xatural History : the stage next the basis is Physic ; the stage 
next the vertical point is Metaphysic. As for the cone and ver- 
tical point ( ; the work which Gael worketh from the beginning 
to the end,' namely, the summary law of nature), it may fairly 
be doubted whether man's inquiry can attain to it." De Aug. 
Book III. ch. iv. 

But to pass from metaphysic to this summary law of nature is 
a transition from form and the atom to the creative and spiritual 
power of God. Of this summary law, though we may not ;< at- 
tain to it," though " God may reserve it within his own curtain," 
yet, according to Bacon, we may " offer at it " (Bacon's Works, 
Vol. X. p. 346). and in the play such an attempt is made in the 
passage in which Prospero comments on the unreality of the 
masque he had presented, saying that the figures which had been 
seen were but the embodiments of his own thoughts, — 



THE TEMPEST. 689 

" Spirits, which by his art 
He had from their confines call'd to enact 
His present fancies," — 

and adds that human life and the outward world were equally 
unsubstantial. 

" These our actors, 

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and 

Are melted into air, into thin air, 

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 

The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, 

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff 

As dreams are made on, and our little life 

Is rounded with a sleep." 

But dreams are thoughts to which form is given by the im- 
aging power of the mind, and which pass away as soon as the act 
of thinking them ceases ; so that the passage taken all together 
seems to lay down the doctrine that the phenomenal world is but 
the result of the imaging or creative thought of God, and will 
vanish like a dream as soon as that thought is withdrawn. 

All work is for the purpose of producing some effect, and the 
use of the necessary means is requisite to this end ; but this is 
nothing else than the practical application of the knowledge of 
causes, so that all work is, in one sense, Operative Philosophy. 
In Natural Philosophy, only efficient, material, and formal causes 
are relied upon by Bacon. He rejects final causes as perverting 
and corrupting inquiry in the material world, but in human in- 
tercourse admits their validity and use. And inasmuch as the 
ends which men pursue are the final causes of their actions, and 
to inquire into their ends (as in Lear} is " an inquisition of 
causes," so the working on the wills and hearts of men so as to 
impel them to some particular course of action is a M production 
of effects." In the great majority of instances men are worked 
upon and brought to act either by entreaty or by persuasion, by 
command, by promises, or threats, that is, by hope of reward or 
fear of punishment. 

Every scene of the play furnishes an instance of work, or 
Operative Philosophy, whether it appear in so simple a form as 
that of Caliban or of Ferdinand, carrying logs, or the higher 
44 



690 THE TEMPEST. 

intellectual occupation of Prospero working out his projects. All 
art and skill are but the application of the knowledge of causes ; 
and of the application of an 4 efficient ' cause a striking example is 
given in the seamanship of the Boatswain, who, to prevent the 
wreck of the ship by being driven on a lee-shore, gives the ne- 
cessary orders, " Lay her a-hold, a-hold ! set her two courses ; of 
to sea again ; lay her off! " and the rest of the scene. 

Caliban and Ariel are ruled by promises and threats, rewards 
and punishments, — all which illustrate the production of effects 
by final causes. 

Antonio instigates Sebastian to the murder of the king by dis- 
tinctly setting before him the advantageous end, that is, the sov- 
ereignty to be acquired by it, — a strong instance of the effect of 
a final cause ; and if it is not too minute to notice (although the 
wonderful art of this writer is, perhaps, best seen in his atten- 
tion to little things) the bottle which Stephano " made of the 
bark of a tree with his own hands " may be taken as an instance 
of a material cause. 

Any tolerably close examination of this piece will prove that 
it illustrates Work, or Operative Philosophy, according to Bacon's 
notions of the same. And the dramatist, as it was his wont 
to levy tribute on all the learning and literature of his time, 
found apparently in Bacon's Two Books of the Proficience and 
Advancement of Learning, many hints and germs which he de- 
veloped in The Tempest. Still this book is insufficient to 
account for numerous passages and scenes between which and 
the doctrines of Bacon there exists a striking analogy, but these 
doctrines must be sought in the Novum Organum, which, how- 
ever, was not published till 1620, or four years after Shake- 
speare's death. Howbeit, that which in Bacon's works appears 
as dry statements of abstract propositions is reproduced dramat- 
ically in all the complexity and vitality of organic life. The 
truth put forward in The Tempest is evidently that "knowledge 
is power, ' and that such knowledge can be gained only by labor 
and travail. This is the " form" of the play, which is made up 
of works and travails, while to a " Voyage of Discovery'" there is 
a clear allusion in the following lines : — 

" O rejoice 
Beyond a common joy, and set it down 
With gold on lasting pillars. In one voyage 



THE TEMPEST. 691 

Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis ; 
And Ferdinand, her brother, found a wife 
Where he himself was lost ; Prospero his dukedom 
In a poor isle, and all of us ourselves 
When no man was his own" 

The leading conceptions involved in the plan of a Shake- 
spearian play always give form and color to its diction, its meta- 
phor, and, in fact, to many passages of considerable length. The 
character and fortunes of Prospero obviously furnish a parallel, 
and may be taken as an image or type of the Baconian doctrine 
that the true use of knowledge, which is the fruit of travail, is 
to restore to man the dominion over nature, which he lost by 
his fall. Therefore Knowledge, Travail, and Power are (among 
others) leading conceptions which ramify into subdivisions ; but 
without attempting an exhaustive analysis, let us consider one or 
two of them with a view of marking their influence upon the 
rhetoric of the play. 

In the Novum Organum, Book II. Aph. 7, Bacon treats of the 
necessity of obtaining a knowledge of the ultimate particles of 
bodies, on which their specific properties and virtues depend, 
and says : " A separation and solution of bodies must be effected, 
not by fire indeed but by reasoning and induction." The instru- 
ment for this purpose is what metaphysicians call " the divisive 
and compositive faculty." These processes — analysis and syn- 
thesis — belong to the mechanism of the mind ; they are constit- 
uent principles of thought, and must needs be common to all 
men. In all inquiries after knowledge they come into play, al- 
though in most cases their action is so rapid that it escapes atten- 
tion and even consciousness. By these faculties the man of sci- 
ence resolves bodies into their elements, studies their properties, 
and then recombines them in whole or in part at pleasure. Among 
a mass of facts, the relation of the parts to the whole is traced, 
and their connection and sequence established. Henee ensue 
order, arrangement, progress, according to principle. These are 
qualities in which, as we have seen, Prospero excels. 

The most familiar instance, however, of the aotion oi -the 
divisive and compositive faculty" is in the use of speech. Every 
man who speaks a sentence, or who listens to one, brings into 
play this faculty. A thought exists entire in the mind of die 
speaker, who, to convey it to another mind* resolves it into its 



692 THE TEMPEST. 

component words or articulate sounds, which, as he pronounces 
them in succession, are taken up, one by one, by the hearer, who, 
when the last syllable is uttered, by an act of synthesis, combines 
them into one sentence and is thus enabled to gather their mean- 
ing. Ariel, who is an impersonation of speech, and consequently 
of the philosopher's knowledge and power of which speech is the 
vehicle, fully exemplifies analysis and synthesis in his mode of 
action on board the king's ship. 

" Prospero. Hast thou, spirit, 

Perf orm'd to point the tempest that I bade thee ? 
Ariel. To every article. 
I boarded the king's ship ; now on the beak, 
Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin, 
I flam'd amazement : sometime I 'd divide, 
And burn in many places ; on the topmast, 
The yards and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly, 
Then meet and JOIN." 

The divisive and compositive faculty, moreover, as the means 
of testing the respective values of things by an examination of 
their constituent qualities, receives a poetical form in Ferdinand's 
estimate of Miranda. 

" Ferd. Admir'd Miranda ! 

Indeed the top of admiration ; worth 
What 's dearest to the world ! Full many a lady 
I have eyed with best regard, and many a time 
Th' harmony of their tongues hath into bondage 
Brought my too diligent ear : for several virtues 
Have I lik'd several women ; but never any 
With so full soul, but some defect in her 
Did quarrel with the noblest grace she ow'd 
KvAput it to the foil ■ but you, O you ! 
So perfect and so peerless, are created 
Of every creature's best." 

The notions of " separation and solution " (analysis) reappear 
in the diction, in the use of such words as " loose, untie, resolve, 
dissolve, melt, divide, sever, distinct, several; also split, rift, 
rend, break, remove, leave, quit," etc., and particularly in such 
words as have a distributive sense, as disperse, asperse, diffuse, 
degg (i. e. to sprinkle), shower, sow QL e. to scatter seeds), be- 
strew, every (i. e. all taken separately), manifold, freckled, many- 
colored, many taken distributively, as in the phrase "many a 
time," etc. 



THE TEMPEST. 693 

On the other hand, with composition (synthesis) are affined in 
meaning words of union, as meet, join, knit, knot, gather, collect, 
approach, etc. 

In the following phrase appear both separation and composi- 
tion : — 

" Is she the goddess that hath severed us, 
And brought us thus together ? " 

It may be noted also that the action of the piece, taken in its 
largest view, is an exemplification of analysis and synthesis. The 
characters are dispersed in distinct groups over the island, and 
after they have been severally put to the test they are again re- 
united in one company at the end. 

By " separation and solution " bodies are resolved into their 
first elements. This reduction of a thing to its minutest parts is 
found in such lines as these : — 

" I '11 shew thee every fertile inch of the island." 

" He '11 be hang'd yet 
Though every drop of water swear against it." 

" A space whose every cubit 
Seems to cry out, ' How shall that Claribel 
Measure us back to Naples V" 

In the next there is a subdivision of a genus into its species : — 
" Where, but even now, with strange and several noises 
Of roaring, shrieking, howling, jingling chains, 
And more diversity of sounds, all horrible, 
We were awak'd." 

An element being the smallest indivisible part of a thing, it at 
once suggests minuteness, singleness, and individuality. These 
notions are infused into the style with incomparable skill, first, 
by the use of words signifying minuteness and singleness, as 
minute, fine, least, little, delicate, single, trifle, etc., and then by 
the introduction of diminutives, as cock ere/, chick, hidykin. or of 
words denoting the smallest part of a thing, as a hair, a drop, a 
dowle, a syllable, a morsel, an eye (i. c a tinge) of green, and 
also the repeated use of one, once, alone; but particularly by in- 
troducing a multitude of phrases of two words, or three at most, 
besides a large number of single insulated ic<>rds< many o( them 
monosyllables, with which last the play is plentifully sprinkled. 

The notion of individuality or onenS8S is Strikingly expressed 
in the following lines : — 



694 THE TEMPEST. 

" Now I '11 believe 
That there are unicorns ; that in Arabia 
There 's one tree., the phoenix' throne, one phoenix 
At this hour reigning there." 

The constant recurrence, under various forms, of the notions of 
singleness and minuteness adds greatly to the effect of the play, 
the philosophy of which teaches the value of the minutest mo- 
ments and the potency of the smallest things corresponding in 
this with the Baconian doctrine that all true knowledge is at- 
tained by the study of particulars, and all operation is employed 
upon individuals. 

The scene, too, is on an island, and that a solitude, and the 
time of the action is fixed at a brief stated period, and we find 
many expressions denoting instants of time or appointed periods, 
as " in a twink, at once, to-night, once a month, once a day, supper- 
time, midnight, noon-tide, the sixth hour" etc. The place of the 
action, too, is sometimes brought down emphatically to a fixed 
spot, as " here on this grass-plot, in this very place." 

Opposed to singleness are the notions o\ plurality and com- 
pany, as in score, twain, couple, etc., or in phrases combining the 
two notions, as " the king and all his company," " your Highness 
and your train," " Caliban and his companions," " I and my fel- 
lows," and others. 

The elements, popularly, are earth, air, fire, water. But as the 
Tempest represents man under his physical conditions and mainly 
diligent to guard against the skyey influences, there are found in 
the vocabulary snoic, rain, cloud, light, flame, storm, sea, shy, 
winds, waves, sun, moon, thunder, lightning, and similar refer- 
ences to the elemental world; also many terms indicating the 
action and influence of the elements, as hum, freeze, ivet, bloio, 
and so on, and others referring to man's physical wants and neces- 
sities, as sleeping, waking, eating, drinking, weariness, pain, 
ache, disease, suffemng, drowning, death, etc. 

The mouth is the organ of speech, and as such is the instru- 
ment of the intellect. But it is also the organ through which 
men administer to their animal wants and appetites, the undue in- 
dulgence of which debases the mind and emphatically attests the 
absence of discipline. The importance of its uses is suggested in 
the opening scene where death by drowning is, by metonymy, 
spoken of as coldness of mouth. " What ! must our mouths be 



THE TEMPEST. 695 

cold ? " says the sailor in view of the immediate wreck of the ship. 
By it, too, utterance is given to those inarticulate sounds, which 
express bodily pleasure, pain, and other states of feeling. Not 
only, therefore, is the mouth itself, with its adjuncts, teeth, 
tongue, throat, cheeks, lungs, etc., many times made mention of, 
but its offices, as the organ of sound (and sound implies the ear 
and hearing}, in speaking, singing, laughing, sighing, howling, 
roaring, shrieking, etc., as well as its more animal functions of 
eating, drinking, biting, swallowing, gaping, mowing, hissing, lick- 
ing, etc., are constantly introduced both in a literal and metaphori- 
cal sense. Hence, too, the mention made of the meals of the day. 
One of Prospero's magic shows is a banquet devoured by a Harpy. 
Stephano and his companions very amply exemplify the animal 
uses of the mouth. 

The hero of this comedy is Man doomed to eat his bread in the 
sweat of his brow ; the heir of want and suffering, the slave of 
the elements, yet with possibilities of being king over them by 
knowledge. In such a world the highest virtue is prudence, and 
the aim of life utility and material comfort. Prudence regulates 
human life according to the laws and economy of the world. It 
is the practical application of knowledge to the production of 
effects, thereby converting knowledge into power; whence it is 
obvious that the numerous words in the vocabulary expressive of 
authority or of the domestic or political relations are directly con- 
nected with this central thought of the play. 

Prudence, moreover, is observant of the order of time, which 
corresponds with the order of nature and the progress of events 
and is inseparably connected with the notion of advancement. 

Advantage is a synonym of opportunity, and is allied, also, 
with terms signifying utility, use, increase. Among others is 
found utensil, a word dropped by Prospero and picked up by 
Caliban, who u gets it off" when taking a prospective glance at 
Prospero's possible going to housekeeping ! 

"He has brave utensils (for so he rails them) 
Which, when he has a house, he 11 deck withal." 

Advancement runs through the piece; it is involved funda- 
mentally with the notions of travail, discovery, proficii na in 
knowledge. "I must needs hold," says Bacon, "thai the art 
of discovery may advance as discoveries advana " {>*o\. Org. 
Book I. Aph. 130). It is seen in the steady advance, step by 



696 THE TEMPEST. 

step, of Prospero's plans to regain his power : also in the con- 
tinuous purposes of the two sets of conspirators : and the whole 
movement of the piece — and each of the plays has a special 
movement in accordance with its leading conception — is that of 
a regular orderly progress. Of course, it appears in metaphor 
and diction. Of latent process, or advancement through minute 
degrees, the following are instances : — 

'•'But one fiend, at a time 
I Tl fight their legions o'er. 
Seb. Ill he thy second" 

" Single I '11 resolve you 
(YYTrich to you shall seem probable) of every 
These happen' d accidents.''' 

u All the infections that the sun sucks up 
From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall and make him 
By inch-meal a disease.' 1 

This dominant notion of Advancement through the fit and pru- 
dent use of time — the result of the highest wisdom — is aestheti- 
cally balanced and strengthened by contrast with many passages 
framed on the opposite notion of preposterousness (or the placing 
that first which should be last) which, in a passage already quoted, 
Bacon declares to be one of the greatest and commonest violations 
of Civil Prudence. This appears under the analogous forms of in- 
version, reaction, reverse movement, contrariety of effect or recip- 
rocal action, and enters into the thought and shapes the structure 
of many passages and even controls the collocation of words. A 
score of examples might be quoted, but the following will suffice 
to make clear the poet's method. 

;< But this is trifling ; 
And all the more it seeks to hide itself 

The bigger bulk it shews." 

"' There they hoist us 
To cry to the sea that roar'd to us, to sigh 
To the winds, that sighing back again 
Did us but loving wrong.'' 

" My trust 
Like a good parent, did beget of him 
A falsehood, in its contrary as g 
As my tr 

" O heaven, O earth, bear witness to this sound 
And crown wl pith hind event 



THE TEMPEST. 697 

If I speak true : if hollowly, invert 
What best is boded me to mischief" 

" And ye that on the sands with printless feet 
Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him 
When he comes back." 

" Like one 
Who, having unto truth, by telling of it 
Made such a sinner of his memory 
To credit his own lie." 

" If you but knew how you the purpose cherish 
Whiles thus you mock it ! how in stripping it 
You more invest it ! " 

" My prime request 
Which I do last pronounce." 

The idea of the play that man by Travail and Discovery may 
recover his dominion over nature, as typified by Prospero regain- 
ing his dukedom by Art, has an accessory in Bacon's doctrine that 
all new discoveries are new creations ; and if the play is a phi- 
losophical allegory, representing views similar to those of Bacon, 
there should be found in its diction and dialogue some proof 
that a conception so important had a place in the plan of the 
writer, for so uniform is the method of this writer that all the 
conceptions into which the main idea of a work can be analyzed 
are sure to appear in some form in its diction and composition. 
All work, making, and production are creation ; these notions 
are found everywhere in the play, but creation in its primitive 
sense is a begetting or bringing forth. The Latin creo,-are, is, 1. 
To bring forth, to produce, to make, to beget; part, cretttus, 
sprung from, born of, an offspring, a son. 2. To produce, pro- 
pare, cause, occasion. And. Latin Diet, in v. 

Phrases containing this particular signification of bringing 
forth, etc., are quite numerous. It may be remarked that G( m / - 
ation and to generate are terms habitually used by Bacon to 
denote the production of effects. And in his famous first Aphor- 
ism of Book II. of the Novum Organum ho defines the aim of 
Human Power, as we have seen, in these words : fck On a given body 
to generate and superindnoo a now nature or now natures IS the 
work and aim of Human Power;" and in this way ho BOUghl to 
new-create, change, and transform bodies. And in the play the 
same doctrine appears in this passage : — 



698 THE TEMPEST. 

" Thy false uncle 



Being once perfected how to grant suits, 

How to deny them, who t' advance, and who 

To trash for over-topping, new created 

The creatures that were mine, I say, or changed 'em, 

Or else new-form' d 'em." 

This instance is directly in point with regard to the changes to 
be effected in bodies by the generation of new natures on theirs. 

In the following citations is found the radical thought of crea- 
tion : — 

" Then was this island 
(Save for the son she did litter here, 
A freckled whelp, hag-born) not honour'd with 
A human shape." 

" Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself 
Upon thy wicked dam, come forth." 

" I had peopled else 
This isle with Calibans," 

" All things in common nature should produce 
Without sweat or endeavour. . . . 

Nature should bring forth 
Of its own kind, all foison, all abundance." 

" The setting of thine eye and cheek proclaim 
A matter from thee, and a birth indeed 
Which throes thee much to yield." 

Other quotations could be made which, like the foregoing, would 
prove that creation is a radical notion in the idea or theory of the 
play ; but this theory of new discoveries being creations, which 
Bacon founded on a passage of Lucretius, appeared first in the 
Novum Organum ; yet it is evident that this view of man's for- 
tunes and destiny, which are so peculiarly in accord with Bacon's 
love of knowledge and intense desire to benefit the human race, 
was entirely familiar to the writer of The Tempest ; in fact, has 
a superb illustration in the beneficent power of Prospero. 

Who is the true king ? is the question that is asked and an- 
swered by this comedy. Alonzo, Antonio, and Sebastian are 
political shams. Alonzo has no kingly qualities. He sinks be- 
neath the loss of his son, and refuses to entertain even a reason- 
able hope of his safety. 



THE TEMPEST. 699 

With Antonio and Sebastian power is not faculty, but mere 
brute force. They seek no supremacy by inward qualification, 
but hold that fraud and violence are the best agents of advance- 
ment, and " obedient steel, three inches of it," the true instru- 
ment to attain sovereignty. 

One moral taught by The Tempest is that work and industry 
are honorable, and that no excellence nor success can be had 
without them. And it is this truth that gives point and signifi- 
cancy to the humorous reverse of it, which Gonzalo sketches in his 
model commonwealth. 

Notwithstanding the deeper esoteric meanings which lie under 
the letter of the play, its romantic wildness is in all things pre- 
served. We are not allowed for a moment to forget that we are 
stranded upon a desert island far away in unknown seas, where 
everything is wonderful and strange ; where sweet sounds float 
in the air, and fairies dance upon the sands, and echoing in their 
songs the crowing cock and the watch-dog's bark, impress us with 
a deeper sense of the wildness of the spot, by suggesting amid its 
solitude, such familiar images of rural homes and neighborhoods. 

Malone wrote an argument to prove that The Tempest was 
suggested to Shakespeare by the storm that wrecked the fleet of 
Sir George Somers off the Bermudas in 1609, of which an ac- 
count was written by one Silvester Jourdain and published in 
1610 ; and that from this storm the play takes the title of The 
Tempest. It is evident that the writer of the play was acquainted 
with this account, and also with Eden's " History of Travail," and 
other books of American discovery. But the storm scene in the 
comedy is quite short, and is hardly more than an induction to the 
piece. It is not sufficient in itself to give title to the play as The 
Tempest, whereas the title should refer to the whole action of 
the piece. We must, therefore, look further. The word Tempest 
is the Latin tempestas, with the termination dropped. The signi- 
fications of tempestas are thus given : — 

Tempestas. — I. A limited time or period, a portion, point, or 
space in time, a time, season, period. 

II. Time, with respect to physical qualities, weather. 

A. Literally, of good as well as of bad weather. 

2. Of bad, especially of stormy weather ; a storm, a tempest. 

B. Tropically, calamity, misfortune. And. Lat. Diet, in v. 



700 THE TEMPEST, 

The Latin tempestivus, a word from the same root, gave the old 
English word (now obsolete) tempestive or seasonable. 

Now, when we remember that the aqtion of this play is by its 
own stated conditions to terminate within a certain limited period 
of time ; that the organic idea takes the form of the observance of 
opportunity or the wise use or fitness of time ; that the sub- 
ject of the play has reference to the storms and calamities of life 
as well as to man's relations to the elemental world generally ; 
and above all when we think of the fondness of this writer for 
subtle and hidden meanings, and for accumulating thought upon 
one word, it is manifest that in entitling his comedy The Tempest, 
he had in view — at least in his own mind — the primary and 
classical signification of the word. And for the reason that a 
Tempest is a limited period of time, and not from regard to any 
critical canon, is the unity of time in this piece strictly preserved. 

Surprise has frequently been expressed that at the maturity of 
his life, and in fact at the close of his labors as a dramatist, two 
plays should have been written by the same man so unlike as The 
Winter's Tale and The Tempest, the one violating in the most 
extravagant manner the unities of time and place, the other pre- 
serving them in all respects; but this extreme diversity is the 
necessary consequence of the fidelity with which the great Master 
adheres to his wonderful Method. 



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